Wipe off your home from Google's Street View to keep voyeurs at bay

Melbourne, Aug 7 : People, who want to keep their homes away from the prying eyes of voyeurs on Google's Street View, can now get their house entirely removed from the smart feature that provides 360 degrees panoramic street-level views of the cities.

The feature came into light after Hollywood stars like Winona Ryder started having their homes removed or the addresses changed on Google Street View to keep voyeueristic fans at bay.

Winona Ryder's residence is listed as 1320 N. Doheny West Hollywood, although the Street View map lists it as 1314 N. Doheny Dve and is on the corner of Cordell Dve.

A few clicks of the button are all it requires to wipe off your home from Google's Street View. However, Rob Shilkin of Google Australia said that the process could take a couple of minutes or a few days to come into affect, depending on the volume of requests.

"The owner or the occupier can request for the image to be removed. Look for Street View 'help', and click on that and you will see 'report image,'" News.com.au quoted Shilkin, as telling the Courier Mail.

Many interesting sites in Hollywood have been deleted to avoid people from doing a virtual reality tour of actors' homes, visiting movie locations or even seeing crime scenes.

There have also been cases where entire streets have been wiped from Street View existence, such as large chunks of Rodeo Drive to prevent people from even window shopping online. In fact, many other avenues and streets in the plush suburb have also been blocked.

"An entire street can be blocked if all the residents in that street ask for it," said Shilkin.

However, this deletion is not limited only to private homes, for other major xites like the iconic Chateau Marmont hotel in West Hollywood, which is chock full of Hollywood history and best known for the death of John Belushi, is seen in the distance on one angle in a frame of a neighbouring property but cannot be accessed from the front of the residence.

There are also instances where numbers in the street have been duped, doubled up or wiped to create confusion.

ANI