Using Google Maps for Fun and Chaos

If the United States government took a picture of your home, your car, and your neighborhood and put it up on the internet for anyone to locate and exploit, you would be pissed.  Well, Google is providing this service for free.

Drudge said that Google was putting peoples’ faces on the streets of Google Maps, and while they are, what I think is worse is that Google is putting license plates online too.  This is Filbert St. in San Francisco.  Nice neighborhood.

So how can an attacker use this info for malice and fun?  Look up the name of someone you really don’t like in a city where the streets have been photo’d.  Look around the the cars out in front of their house.

All your Civics belong to Google!

Note the license plate numbers of all of the cars.  Then type in “towing” into the google search bar to locate the nearest towing company.  Call them up and complain about a car parked in front of the house and have it towed away.  Or if you are really bold, report it stolen.

Have the cars towed to a nearby grocery store.  Have all the cars on the street towed there.  Make it look like a sudden town meeting at a local church.  Or have all the cars towed to Google’s nearest office.