Don't Let Google Help Burn Your House Down

Like with the Annual Credit Report tip, I'm going to share another you might already know.

Or might have at least thought about, before getting busy and moving on to more pressing things.

Like where you left the remote.

I can't speak for other generations.

But my generation — The Millennials — have been ground down by busy work.

Especially when it comes to managing your privacy and safety.

That's because the tech companies have pushed all the work — and all the responsibility if we don't do that work — onto us.

So if someone says, "You should make sure your home is blurred on Google Maps" you may respond with either:

1. "LOL. My generation can't afford a home. So this advice doesn't apply to me."
2. "Yeah yeah yeah. I'll get to it. After I finish doing the 7,234 other things in front of me."

Decision fatigue is real.

We're going to talk a lot about it.

But let me back up to that first point real quick ...

Privacy Tip: You Should Keep Your House Off Google

Home ownership is out of reach for most, if not all, of my generation and the ones behind us.

So, it doesn't matter who owns the home you're living in.

What matters is that you may want to get it blurred on Google Maps.

Here's How

1. Put your address into Google Maps.
2. On the bottom right, you'll see the Street View Square. Click on that.
3. You'll see a Black Box on the screen with your home address. Click on the 3 dots on that Black Box
4. Select "Report A Problem." This will take you to a new screen.
5. You'll see a picture of your home. Make sure it's within the Red Box.
6. Under the picture of your home, it'll say "Request Blurring." Make sure "My Home" is selected.
7. They'll make you click a box stating you own the home, so make sure this is selected.
8. There's an info box that'll appear. All you need to enter is "I'm requesting that my home be blurred." If there's a couple of homes in the picture, you can give them additional information to make sure they blur your home and not your neighbor's.
9. Put in a good email address to be reached at. Like say, your cleverly disguised Proton Account using the @ Duck email. Then complete the CAPTCHA and submit the form.

You'll get an email from Google saying they've acknowledge receipt of your report.

But then it'll take about a month for Google to get back to you on the blurring request.

Like Magic, Doing This Comes With A Price

Once you blur your home, you can't undo it.

So before we go, I want to give you two reasons not to do this:

1. If you're planning on selling your home, blurring it may make it appear blurred on popular websites that list homes for sale.
2. If you blur your home, but your neighbors don't. Or if you're the only blurred house in the neighborhood ... Then you're going to stand out. That may defeat the purpose of this exercise.

It's sort of like, if you go to a protest, do you want to bring a completely locked down, second phone?

Maybe.

But if you do, and you're the only one with a locked down phone, it also makes you stand out.

One solution is that you blur your neighbor's house too. But they may get kind of pissed.

So, if that's the route you want to take, it may be worth talking to them first.

Personally, I think the best way to protect yourself — and your community — from fascists and weirdos is if we blur all of our homes.

You may disagree, and that's ok. But this is a discussion worth having with your neighbors.

Remember: Defending our privacy and safety is a collective act.

Not an individual one.

In an upcoming post, I'll talk about how to remove your home from Bing and Apple Maps too.

-BJ