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Opt Out Of Google Street View?
By: Chris "Silver" Smith 2008-05-09 The guys over at Google Sightseeing noticed that the Google Streetview camera in Fairbanks, Alaska apparently got covered over with plastic bags, obscuring some of the images that were shot.
This led to speculation that some enterprising residents had perhaps purposefully obscured the cameras out of privacy concerns - though, that seems moderately unlikely to me since I doubt most people know what the car even is when its tooling around, shooting photos of places. Another theory is that the bags were to protect the camera during rain for a while, and the operator forgot to remove it while shooting pics. It reminds me of here in the Dallas, Texas area where we have cameras on a number of intersections, automatically capturing license plates when people go through on red lights. Ive heard people talking about using special reflective mirrors or electronic devices which return a flash immediately, ruining the legibility of the surveillance cameras (though, I personally think the simpler solution is to just not pass through on red lights). Undoubtedly, more people would use creative methods to keep their homes from being photographed by the Street View camera, if they knew what it was and when it was to drive by. As it is, I think the obscured images are just some sort of accident. CommentsTag: Google Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Have a bookmark! - ![]() View All Articles by Chris "Silver" Smith About the Author: Chris formerly headed up the Advanced Technology Department for Verizon Superpages.com (later spun off under Idearc Media), where he worked for ten years, specializing in patent-pending work in mapping, local search, analytics, and SEO. As the natural search optimization expert for Idearc, he founded and chaired the company's SEO Council. Chris is currently a Lead Search Strategist for Netconcepts, a search optimization firm. Chris is a regular columnist for Search Engine Land, covering the 'local search' beat. He also blogs for Natural Search Blog, and speaks at industry conferences such as Search Engine Strategies. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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