google maps has changed the way we see the world by literally letting us
see the world you can use your computer to see virtually every corner of the planet displayed
in clear photographs but not every place is open to such scrutiny a handful of locations have
been obscured from views some potentially for nefarious or mysterious reasons and others for
less mysterious reasons for instance you can request have your own home blurred out
if you want but that may not be exactly what happened with these other locations
number 10. kfc google street view is a great way to get an idea of what a
neighborhood looks like before you go there or to look at your own house and try and guess on
what day the photo was taken but if you look around enough particularly in populated areas
you'll notice that if the google cameras ever catch a person that person's face is obscured
this is a privacy matter and it makes total sense most people don't want to show up on google when
they never ask to be there if you happen to look at a map and see a kfc you'll notice that the
sign for the restaurant is also partially obscured this is at every kfc everywhere and the part they
obscure is the face of colonel sanders the reason harlan sanders was a real person and google was
protecting his identity not actively of course but as a byproduct of the facial recognition software
that google uses this is probably not the best advertising perk for a famous brand but it happens
on posters and billboards as well kfc is just the most noticeable victim since so many of their
signs are affected and they're such a large brand because the faces are obscured thanks to software
they could also potentially all be unblurred kfc has expressed they'd like the colonel's face to be
seen but while the software automatically blurs faces the unblurring process would
likely have to be done manually this would take time and money and it's unlikely anyone's really
that interested in doing it 9. jeanette island few of us would likely ever be familiar with
jeanette island located in the east siberian sea if not for google obscuring it from view
at just 0.5 square kilometers it's not much of an island at all it was initially claimed by george
de long for the united states back in 1881 but later russia laid claim to it since it's in the
middle of absolutely nowhere and it's little more than an icy rock the property dispute has
never really seemed like a big deal on google maps the island is obscured by a black smudge
naturally this led to any number of conspiracy theories about the island ranging from it being
a secret army base to an alien presence google wouldn't comment on why the island was blacked
out so it could be something as simple as an error on their end or something more insidious
like the conspiracy theorists suggest number 8. xinjiang prison camps we're cheating a little
bit with this one because everything on google is banned in china google moved their hq to hong kong
and china was not pleased so you can't actually see anything on google maps in china with the
exception of anything that may have been archived prior to 2010 that said there are other mapping
services that china has not banned including baidu like google this service uses satellite
images to build maps and like google some of those maps have been obscured one of the most
notable obscured locations seems to be a series of prison camps in xinjiang in the northwest of
china these camps are said to be where some ethnic minorities are held an in-depth analysis of the
maps turned up over 400 facilities in the area that number 315 are believed to be in service as
detention camps or related facilities to give some perspective on what that means it's estimated that
somewhere around 1.5 million people may be being detained in these prisons 7. ariel castro's house
some of the things obscured on google maps are seemingly insignificant at first glance like
a single house as we said earlier you can actually request that your own house be obscured so it's
not too unusual to see this phenomenon but not all blurred houses are created equal the one-time
house of ariel castro was blurred out on the app and it was definitely not at the request of castro
castro's in prison for life plus a thousand years for torturing three women that he held captive for
an entire decade in 2013 house was torn down as part of the ruling against him google's photo is
still dated to 2009 when the house exists so the image is still blurred 6. beyonce's house there's
a 15 000 square foot mansion in the heart of new orleans garden district that is obscured on google
maps why can't people see it speculation is that the house's history has made it something that
should be swept under the rug to put it bluntly this house has been a circus for years in the
modern era beyonce and jay-z owned the house they didn't live there they just owned it that alone
has been a mysterious thing as they listed it for sale in 2021 raising the asking price of the house
by a million dollars over the course of the week for no reason but using photos from 2015 before
someone tried to burn the place down the home was originally built in the 1910s as a presbyterian
church the church bought more and more land over the years and added onto the building in 1923 the
redesigned church was opened by a group of ku klux klan members apparently the pastor was the
pastor of the louisiana chapter of the clan in the 1970s the then abandoned building was turned into
a ballet school the school was gone by the year 2001 when new owners performed the most massive
renovation today transforming it into a mansion the property was then bought for 2.6 million in
2015 by beyonce's company so why is it blurred out maybe beyonce and jay-z requested it maybe
google is obscuring the clan history maybe it's just another glitch whatever the case there seems
to be a good number of potential reasons behind it number 5. muraroa if you go cruising through
french polynesia or google earth you'll run across the tiley island of muraroa it's about 780 miles
from tahiti and for 30 years france conducted their nuclear weapons testing there as many
as 110 000 residents of nearby islands and atolls suffered exposure to fallout from these same tests
a fact that france was not entirely forthcoming about despite the obviously dangerous sounding
nature of the island there's still an airstrip there so it's technically accessible to anyone
with a passionate interest in radioactive islands if you want to view it from a farm you'll have
less luck however on google earth you can only see half of the island for some reason the way
the image has been presented the entire right half of the island is obscured behind a blur filter the
left half of the island is just poor resolution and there's little to see beside clouds there are
apparently french troops on site to protect the location that means the site is still an active
french military outpost and as such the french government may have requested to keep it off the
map 4. jane allison's house jane anderson's house is not visible on google maps it's a blur like
many houses that have been obscured for one reason or another allison lives in stockton on t in the
uk and her house is the only one on her street that you can't see her privacy is assured as is
the right of any homeowner who contacts google and asks to have their own home hidden from view so
what's the problem jane allison didn't want us to see her house it's no big deal right not exactly
she had no idea her house was obscured and she'd been living there since the year 2000. it's likely
that the blur was nothing more than an oversight on google's part but jane anderson isn't sure at
this point you're probably asking yourself who is jane allison and well she's just a regular person
which makes her residents being blurred even more baffling 3. the amityville house there are only a
handful of houses people around the world will likely recognize on-site elvis graceland comes
to mind or the white house but these are not really just houses strictly speaking in terms
of just regular houses and regular neighborhoods there aren't many that rise to infamy unless they
get featured in film or tv in some prominent way you know like the amityville house believe it or
not there are over 30 amityville movies not all of them are in the same series and many of them just
use the same name because there's no copyright on the town's name to prevent anyone from
bandwagon jumping the original series covered the alleged haunting that took place after the defeo
murders back in the 1970s the true story of the amityville horror can be debated but there really
was a house that real people lived in the home has been renovated and remodeled so it doesn't look
the same any longer and it just looks like the current owners also requested that google remove
it from street view 2. gaza if you want to check out israel on google maps there's a lot for you
to look at but one region is notably absent if you try and look at the gaza strip what you're going
to get is a very poor resolution photo of the area there are several areas in and around gaza and
across israel that are obscured from view thanks to low resolution photos that don't let users zoom
in google has said that they try to refresh their database with higher resolution photos when they
can that said other satellite services provide much higher resolution images of that area but
thanks to its popularity and ease of access google is the go-to for most people the reason they don't
clearly show gaza has been questioned by some journalists since the destruction of war is being
obscured number one antarctica you're probably not going to visit antarctica anytime soon but
if you just want a glimpse you can turn to google earth not that there's much to see there it tends
to be endless fields of snow and the odd rock formation but there are some sizable swaths of
land that google earth has blurred out the reason why that's up for debate depending on who you ask
the chunks of blurred land in antarctica are blurred because those high resolution pictures
don't exist why waste resources photographing snow but other people have suggested that the u.s
is running secret operations in secret facilities of what it's worth while many websites claim there
are no satellite photos of antarctica that's not true it may have been at one time but you can
actually see much of it today although it may look blurred since all you're seeing is snow but there
are portions including research facilities run by numerous countries that are obscured