Shortly before we left Durham, the Google car passed us in the street and we are - well, there’s no other word for it - immortalised on Google Street View (fortunately for all, my face blurred).
Today, the Apple Maps car passed me as I swept the driveway gravel. I have high hopes of achieving similar celebrity in France.
Do Waze have a car? If so you could have the complete set!
Google just stole one of my own photos instead. I’ve definitely refused all rights permissions I could see, since forever though but they didn’t respect that. Why send a car when you can steal an image instead?
If you’d been quick thinking Porridge, you could have mooned the Apple car as it passed and got $12,500 ? as in the recent case.
I’ve seen the cars a few times in the UK but never checked if I’m on there. Did find this a few days ago though on google maps. The link for some reason doesn’t seem to enable satellite view, which you’ll need to do to see what I found. Apparently there are people who search for these things
It might be a daft question, but why do they need to actually publish street views of people’s homes? It must be a godsend for thieves and worse, maybe it made it much easier for Ann Widicoms murderer.
I take an odd pleasure in going back to April 2009 to see my parents taking the shopping out of the car
Because it helps people trying to find a particular address. Postcodes cover too wide an area, and if the house has a name instead of a number (as is common in posh bits of the UK) a specific home can be hard to find.
Many’s the time I have used Google Street View to find a client’s house when going there to shoot a wedding or portrait session.
I pulled out behind a Street View car some years ago and followed it for several kilometres. My car is still showing up on a stretch of about 1 Km.
Apple Maps survey vehicles?
I thought they binned that idea in 2016/17.
Once upon a time, some bright spark in Apple Maps tasked with putting a fleet of survey vehicles thought they be clever and save a few bucks through buying new base vehicles in several EU countries and having the electrical/data capture uplift done in the UK.
Both French and German authorities vetoed the idea as, despite the UK uplift/conversion company having all the approvals and a stellar worldwide reputation, the work needed to be re-certified on the vehicles return to their homelands at Apple’s expense and import duty would be charged on the estimated value of the uplift.
When I left in late 2018, there was still a hundred or so white vans with mainland European registrations sitting in Stockley Park. I expect they got moved somewhere when Apple moved into Battersea etc in the early 2020s.
It was invaluable when we searched for our new abode in France. Streetview and Google earth saved us from many viewings…
Not easy, but after a while we became quite adapt at finding a property and checking the nearby locations…. Scrapyard, pig or chicken farm, river too close for comfort…
Captured at the very end of a small, dead-end country lane, as I was making my way back to civilisation at the end of a hike. A brutal return to real life 
You can request that your house/car/face be blurred.
Here:
How to Blur Your Property
Open Google Maps and type your home address into the search bar.
Drag the small yellow person icon onto the map to open the Street View image of your house (or click on the small image)
Click or tap Report a problem (found in the lower-right corner on desktop, or under the three-dot menu on mobile).
Center the red adjustment box over your house or property, select My home or Privacy Concerns as the reason, and fill out the details.
Enter your email address and submit the form
Yes a couple of times and all the faces were blurred. My car is currently on clear view in my son’s street here from when I was lodging with them back in 2022 before the house was finished and many years ago prior to 2015, my son was photographed sitting in his first little red VW Polo in the main Rue Jean Jaures in Brest waiting for the light to change outside Coat Gueven shopping mall. We knew it was him because the number plate was not obscured. I love to travel round on Google Street View and see how old places have changed, what family homes look like and generally seeing what its like elsewhere
All it seems to do here, is send people looking for their booked holiday let, straight to my door along with their satnavs.
Me in the open-top Chrysler, 2011.
Obviously, I saw the car coming towards me and sure enough, a few weeks later there I was.
2021, not there any more. 
I was very disappointed some years ago when we were passed by a google car driving through Dax, but didn’t subsequently appear on a streetview.
As for blurring, I’ve wondered why there is the occasional very blurred part of an image, and had thought it might be a failure of equipment.
I wish they would use the ones I keep sending them, been 22 years since they last drove past and the long grass and tatty exterior has all changed since then. I have emailed them every couple of months for the last year.
Channelling your inner Hyacinth Bucket!
I think they do the facial blurring - and blurring of house numbers, car registrations etc - automatically.
If I see the car again, I’ll send it south!
It was funny to see a friend in the UK standing outside his house, years ago now.
And for ages we thought we had escaped the Google car in our little bit of France profonde. However, eventually it did come, and voilà, there was our elderly neighbour in front of our house.
Living at the end of a farm track means that, unless the Google car catches me bringing the bins down or up when I get to the road, there is a relatively slim chance of being captured for posterity.
