We removed our house from Google Streetview because when I was running a business from home, it felt a little strange that absolutely anyone who ordered products from me could see our house. I don’t know why it really mattered, but somehow it did. I felt like if it wasn’t me posting photos of my home, then it shouldn’t be posted at all.

My 7-year-old daughter loves looking up places around the globe where her grandparents travel, and it’s amazing what you can see on Streetview. So amazing, in fact, that thieves are utilizing it to case homes and find seasonally unoccupied in properties to rob. So there are a few compelling reasons to have your home removed.

Google Maps doesn’t so much remove your home as they just blur it out, but hey, at least now you don’t know how many windows I have out front, I guess? Here’s what it looks like when you Google my address (the Google folks obviously captured our ‘hood before we moved in, because that’s not our vehicle):

Anyhow, I’ve been asked a number of times how we had the house “removed” so I thought I’d share:

1. Find your address at Google Maps
2. Click on the little “person” and drag it to the red address button
3. Release the person icon to see what’s around in Streetview. Note that I’ve chosen the CN Tower, which, when you release the icon on the CN Tower, doesn’t show you the ground view, but a really awesome aerial view instead. To see the ground view, you need to use the street address itself (which I’ll show after).
Here’s the view from above:

Here’s the CN Tower from the ground:

You can look all around, too.

4. Click “Report a problem” in the lower right-hand corner
5. Follow the steps on the next screen, which will ask you to identify what you’d like blurred. For instance, if you were captured in a shot, you could ask for your face to be blurred, or for a license plate or house to be blurred.
Once you submit your request, Google gets on it pretty quickly. Within a couple of days our house was blurred. And that’s it! Easy.