How to Blur Your House on Google Street View
Google will permanently blur your home on Street View, for free, and it takes about four minutes. Here is the exact process — plus Apple Maps, and how to pull the interior photos of your house off Zillow and Redfin, which are arguably worse.
Google Street View — the process
You must do this on a desktop browser. The mobile app does not expose the reporting tool properly.
- Open google.com/maps and navigate to Street View outside your home.
- Position and zoom the view so your house fills the frame roughly the way you want it blurred. What you see is what the review team assesses.
- Click Report a problem — bottom right of the image.
- Choose “My home” as the blur request type, and drag the red box over the property.
- Explain briefly: “This is my home. I am requesting a permanent blur for personal safety.” One sentence is enough.
- Give an email address for the confirmation and submit.
Expect anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. You will get an email either way, and you may be asked to clarify which building is yours — answer promptly, because unanswered queries get closed.
Google treats a home blur as permanent. It persists through future imagery captures, and it cannot be undone later. Some people find this affects a future property sale listing, since the Street View thumbnail estate agents rely on will be blurred too.
Decide before you submit. For most people it is straightforwardly worth it — but it is a one-way door, so it should be a decision rather than a click.
Blur these too, while you're there
- Your car and licence plate, if either is visible in the driveway. Plates are separately reportable.
- Your previous home, if your name is still publicly associated with that address anywhere.
- Faces, if you or your family are captured in the imagery.
Apple Maps and Bing
Apple Maps accepts blur requests for faces, licence plates and property in its Look Around imagery. Use the report option inside Maps, or email MapsImageCollection@apple.com with your address and what you want blurred.
Bing Maps Streetside has a separate privacy request form — search “Bing Maps Streetside privacy” to reach the current one. Bing’s coverage is patchier, so check whether your street is even captured before spending time on it.
The bigger problem nobody mentions
Street View shows a stranger the outside of your house. That is uncomfortable.
Zillow and Redfin may be showing them the inside.
If your home has been listed for sale in the last decade or so, the estate agent’s photographs are probably still attached to the property record — permanently, publicly, and long after the sale completed. Those photos routinely reveal:
- The full floor plan and internal layout
- Which doors and windows are accessible from ground level
- Where the alarm panel is mounted
- Whether there is a dog
- What is worth taking, and which room it is in
For anyone with a genuine safety concern, this is a more serious exposure than the exterior shot — and far fewer people think to check it.
Removing them
- Zillow: find your property page and claim the home as owner (you will verify ownership). Once claimed, you can delete listing photos and hide the property from search where the option is offered. If you cannot claim it, contact Zillow support directly and request removal of interior photos, citing a personal safety concern — they do act on these.
- Redfin: same pattern — claim the property or contact support. Redfin is separate from Zillow and needs its own request.
- Realtor.com: also separate. Also needs its own request.
- Trulia is Zillow-owned, so handling Zillow usually clears it. Verify afterwards rather than assuming.
The photos come from the listing and can be removed. The sale price and date come from the public deed record and will generally stay. Focus on the photos — they are both the greater risk and the removable part.
If you rent
Your position is simpler and mostly better: there is no deed with your name on it, so the property record does not point at you. Your exposure comes from utility hookups, credit header data and delivery addresses instead — which is a data-broker problem rather than a mapping one.
Blur the building anyway. A unit number plus a clear photograph of the entrance is more than a stranger needs.
Blurring the photo is worth doing and it is not the main event. The Ghost Protocol covers the removals, the search-engine cleanup, and how to structure a future property purchase so your name never reaches the deed index in the first place.
One thing to do before you buy your next home
A recorded deed is a legal instrument and it is permanent — you cannot un-file one. But you can decide whose name goes on the next one.
The common approach is a revocable living trust: the deed records the trust as owner rather than your personal name, which keeps you out of the searchable deed index. Pick a name that is not “The [Your Surname] Family Trust”, or you have achieved nothing.
This touches your mortgage, insurance, homestead exemption and estate plan, so it is worth an hour with a real estate attorney in your state rather than a blog post. Chapter 6 of the book covers what to ask them so the hour is efficient.