MapsPrivacy
Your privacy and security are important to us. The Street View team takes a number of steps to help protect the privacy and anonymity of individuals when images are collected for Street View, including blurring faces and license plates. You can easily contact the Street View team if you see an image that should be protected or if you see a concerning image. Learn more by watching our video or reading below.
Privacy Features
Public Access Only
Street View contains imagery from public roads that is no different from what you might see driving or walking down the street. Imagery of this kind is available in a wide variety of formats for cities all around the world. In select cases, Google will partner with an organization such as Disneyland Paris to schedule imagery collection of their property.
Street View Images are not real time
Our images show only what our vehicles were able to see on the day that they drove past the location. Afterward, it takes at least a few months to process the collected images before they appear online. This means that images you look at on Street View could be anywhere from a few months to a few years old.
Individuals and license plates are blurred
We have developed cutting-edge face and license plate blurring technology that is applied to all Street View images. This means that if one of our images contains an identifiable face (for example that of a passer-by on the sidewalk) or an identifiable license plate, our technology will automatically blur it out, meaning that the individual or the vehicle cannot be identified. If our detectors missed something, you can easily let us know.
Reporting Issues
You can request further blurring of a specific image
We provide easily accessible tools allowing users to request further blurring of any image that features the user, their family, their car or their home. In addition to the automatic blurring of faces and license plates, we will blur the entire car, house, or person when a user makes this request for additional blurring. Users can also request the removal of images that feature inappropriate content (for example: nudity or violence).
How to report a problem
Street View images are photographs of views which anybody can see from the street. Faces and car registration plates are blurred automatically by Google before they are published. Although this works in 99% of cases, sometimes an image might not meet our high privacy standards. In this case, we ask you to use the link “Report a problem” at the bottom of Street View and let us know.
- Load the relevant Street View image
- Click "Report a problem" in the bottom-right of the image window.
- Complete the form and click "Submit."
That's it. We'll review your report promptly.
You also have the possibility to report a problem or ask for additional anonymization by post. Please send your request to the address below. We recommend attaching an image of the problematic Street View and clearly marking the area which should be blurred / made unrecognizable. However, we recommend using the online procedure so, by explicitly selecting an online image, potential ambiguity can be avoided.
Postal address to ask for anonymization:
Google Switzerland GmbH
- Street View -
Brandschenkestrasse 110
8002 Zurich