Threat Level recently ran a story about Kevin Bankston, the EFF attorney who decided to test the take-down procedure for privacy-infringing photos within Google’s Street View. Initially, Google required a wealth of information before removing the photo, but they changed their policy, requiring only your name and the location the image was taken. Kevin submitted the information, and the photo was promptly taken down.
If you’ve found an image of yourself cruising around town when you were supposed to be at home with a fever, here’s what you do:
- View the privacy-infringing image in Street View
- Click the “Street View Help” link
- Click the “report inappropriate image” link and fill out the details
Presumably, once you’ve done this, Google will contact you via email and you’ll have to reply with your name and a confirmation that you’re the person in the image.
Here’s the rub, though: if someone else already caught you playing hooky, there’s no point in removing the image anymore. Effectively, you’ll need to find any compromising images before anyone else does.
There’s also a second problem. You may need to report more than one image. Kevin may have had his reported image removed from the database, but I found him again just up the street.
Want Off Street View? Details and discussion at Threat Level – Link
7 thoughts on “Removing yourself from Street View”
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It looks like t-mo closed this loophole as this service is now unfortunately discontinued..
Now my situation may be different but I can tell you T-Zones is in fact active.
I’ve had it on my account for a very long time(>1 yr) and I’ve accidentally took it off through my account on tmobile website. After calling them 2 days later to put it back on, they did, to my relief! for the same $5.99/month
This may not have worked for new customers or for people that never had it to begin with.
Overall, T-Mobile never fails to surprise me with there excellent customer service. never tried the competition but tmo is excellent. im just happy i got tzones back !!
yes they stopped offering t-zones but if you call them and say that you have an older phone like a razor or something like i did then they will let you put the 5.99 t-zones plan on it even though the plan is technically discontinued. i did it last night over the phone, they were very nice and i didnt have argue or anything.