Google Maps reveals spouse's affair

[snopes]

Comment: I heard that on the new pictures available on google maps of
street level photos that someone pulled up their home and saw someone
else's car in the driveway. Based on that information they discovered
that their spouse was having an affair with one of their friends.

[Singing in the Drizzle]

I would guess it is possible in that seeing the car made someone suspicious of their spouses. If the person recognised the car they are could be more suspicious. A car in the drive way alone would not be enough to be prof of someone having an affair.

Google maps use to show my SUV parked at my parents house and not at my own a 120 mile away. They up dated the maps this year and again there is my SUV park (in a different location) at my parents house again and not at mine. I know that the day the picture was taken I was there less than a hours, since my trailer was attached and I would have been dropping something off.

[Tantei Kid]

Originally Posted by snopes

Comment: I heard that on the new pictures available on google maps of
street level photos that someone pulled up their home and saw someone
else's car in the driveway. Based on that information they discovered
that their spouse was having an affair with one of their friends.

If it was their friend's car, why would it be suspicious to be parked near their house?

[Diabolus Ex Deus]

even if this were real (Which I doubt), google maps is always outdated. The picture of my dad's house is before he sold it years ago and they changed the entire property. It could just as easily be a car from a previous owner. Besides, you can't really make cars out that well on google earth. I couldn't tell if the car in front of my house was mine or another black car of a different make. I live in Los Angeles, where the maps are at their highest resolution.

Shrug.

[snopes]

Originally Posted by Diabolus Ex Deus

even if this were real (Which I doubt), google maps is always outdated.

It's kind of a given that photographs will always show past conditions. It's the nature of the beast.

- snopes

[Four Kitties]

Originally Posted by Diabolus Ex Deus

Besides, you can't really make cars out that well on google earth. I couldn't tell if the car in front of my house was mine or another black car of a different make. I live in Los Angeles, where the maps are at their highest resolution.

I disagree. The car parked in front of my house on Google maps is very clearly my car -- you can see the snopes.com bumper sticker. The resolution isn't high enough to read it, but you can see it, just to the left of my license plate.

ETA: The picture was taken on a Sunday, after about 4 p.m. -- our trash day is Monday, and that's my trash. And it was taken after mid-July of last year, because that's when the city trimmed the tree in front of my house. Possibly it was Labor Day weekend, since I have the flag out: if it were Columbus day, the trees would have lost their leaves already. Then again, I often put the flag out for Independence Day and leave it up until Labor Day, so it could also have been any time in August except the Sunday after the third Saturday (I had a party, and there are not enough trash bags).

Four Kitties

[Bonnie]

I heard that on the new pictures available on google maps of street level photos that someone pulled up their home and saw someone else's car in the driveway. Based on that information they discovered that their spouse was having an affair with one of their friends.

Word to the wise: they never buy the copyright-trap defense.

Bonnie "celebrate the moments of your life" Taylor

[Magdalene]

OK, I'm trying this with my address--how do you get the pictures of your houses?

Magdalene

[DemonWolf]

Originally Posted by Tantei Kid

If it was their friend's car, why would it be suspicious to be parked near their house?

Especially if the photo isn't dated or timestamped. All I'd be able to tell is that my friend was at my house at the time.

Even if the friend's car is their and mine isn't, it does not rule out that the friend visited and then rode with me in my car when we went out.

[Mickey Blue]

Originally Posted by Magdalene

OK, I'm trying this with my address--how do you get the pictures of your houses?

Magdalene

I think that some confusion here is over what google program we are talking about. This is the google maps program with the street view option (I presume), not the sat-scan from top down, and not google earth.

Go to google maps (like if you were trying to find directions somewhere) and choose street view and you can see, in 360 degrees, the area you are looking at. Its a great feature when you are trying to see details of where you are going (I used it a lot when I was researching houses, let me see the outside and general area of where I was going).

Like others have said though, unless I am missing something, it doesn't say the specific date/time it was taken so even having a strange car, much less a friends car, in the area doesn't really prove much since you don't know when it was, they could have been there visiting you for all you knew.

-MB

[Nick Theodorakis]

Originally Posted by Mickey Blue

...
Go to google maps (like if you were trying to find directions somewhere) and choose street view and you can see, in 360 degrees, the area you are looking at. Its a great feature when you are trying to see details of where you are going (I used it a lot when I was researching houses, let me see the outside and general area of where I was going).

Note that street view is available only in a few locations.

Nick

[Dr. Winston O'Boogie]

Wow. I'm impressed. Where did they get the pictures? How did they get the pictures? I was playing around a little bit in my home town, "following" the pictures down a state highway. You see cars on the road, and it appears that you are "following" a truck.

OK, I did a little searching. Per the Wikipedia article,

Google Street View displays photos that were previously taken by a camera mounted on an automobile
....
Google initially used images from spherical video company Immersive Media as well as their own vehicles. Since December 2007, Google has used imagery that belongs exclusively to Google

Wow. That's a lot of driving around.

[Singing in the Drizzle]

The photo of someones car in a drive way does not prove much. It could be enough though to start asking question and doing some investigation. The why was best friends and husbands car in driveway on a Tuesday (garbage out along road) sometime during July (ditch in lawn to lay cable) when one or both should have been at work type question. You would think he would have at least mentioned the my best friend was over.

I have been able to tell at least what month and the year the picture Google used was taken. These are the from the aerial photos.

[Meka]

Originally Posted by Singing in the Drizzle

The photo of someones car in a drive way does not prove much. It could be enough though to start asking question and doing some investigation. The why was best friends and husbands car in driveway on a Tuesday (garbage out along road) sometime during July (ditch in lawn to lay cable) when one or both should have been at work type question. You would think he would have at least mentioned the my best friend was over.

I have been able to tell at least what month and the year the picture Google used was taken. These are the from the aerial photos.

This seems to be the catch, though; it all depends on just how much you can, or can't, infer from the photo. In the example you gave, suppose there was no garbage at the curb. Now the photo could arguably have been taken on a weekend, when both you and your husband were home and your friend was over visiting you.

Or suppose your friend has a fairly generic car, so it could just as easily be a neighbor's (or neighbor's friend's) vehicle in the picture. There are two cars on my own street that are fairly difficult to tell apart. In fact, assuming the resolution of Four Kitties' pic is typical, the visible differences are small enough that you probably wouldn't be able to tell them apart on a hypothetical Google Maps photo.

On the other hand, I've heard of accusations of cheating being flung around for far less substantial reasons, so I suppose if the person in question is paranoid enough, anything in such a photo could be grounds for digging deeper.

[Diabolus Ex Deus]

Originally Posted by Four Kitties

I disagree. The car parked in front of my house on Google maps is very clearly my car -- you can see the snopes.com bumper sticker. The resolution isn't high enough to read it, but you can see it, just to the left of my license plate.

ETA: The picture was taken on a Sunday, after about 4 p.m. -- our trash day is Monday, and that's my trash. And it was taken after mid-July of last year, because that's when the city trimmed the tree in front of my house. Possibly it was Labor Day weekend, since I have the flag out: if it were Columbus day, the trees would have lost their leaves already. Then again, I often put the flag out for Independence Day and leave it up until Labor Day, so it could also have been any time in August except the Sunday after the third Saturday (I had a party, and there are not enough trash bags).

Four Kitties

Ahhh - I actually neglected to consider the "Street level view" part of google maps. I stand corrected.

[erwins]

People are also visible in these photos. I just checked the one on my block, and saw two different neighbors getting out of their cars. In addition, the one of my house has a blur where either I or SO was going to the window and shutting the curtains. So, a car may not prove anything, but what if it were a car + the spouse + the best friend in obviously intimate circumstances? That could, to me, be plausible. (But the original question is too vague to really be provable or disprovable).

erwins

[Singing in the Drizzle]

Some of the areas have high resolution aerial pictures, check out this view of my SUV.

[Aureal]

Which one's the SUV?

Wow, looking at this thing is way too cool, still. Although it is defintely rather outdated. I can't figure out how to link a specific image like that, but I can see that the Tacoma avenue bridge across I-5, which has been open since early this year, is still very much under construction in their picture of it. I certainly wouldn't want to drive across it looking like that!

And, looking at pictures of the post offices in the area, it occurs to me that this could be used in the opposite manner to clue one in on possible cheating. If you know when it was taken, look to see if your SO's car is at work if it's when they're supposed to be there! No car there, they must be off cheating or something!

[Cervus]

Frank Cerabino of the Palm Beach Post addressed a situation similar to the OP in a recent column:

So naturally, I Googled my home in Boca Raton and clicked on the "street view" tab, expecting to see a rather generic view of my home.

But what I saw, instead, was my wife in her nightgown.

Our home was somewhere in the background. But I was mesmerized by the scene in the driveway area, where my wife, wearing what we call her "Tijuana dress,'' stood talking to the driver of a large white vehicle parked in our driveway.

I showed [Google's] photo to my wife and she claims it was her boss, although for the record, her boss drives a different make and model of vehicle.

Frank Cerabino is known for his wry humor and lighthearted columns, so everything is likely on the up-and-up (and I doubt he would publish it if it wasn't), but he used the situation as a personal example of such a thing being possible.

[ChildofMusic]

I can see my mom's old, gigantic red van out back of my house. Also, my old silver car is parked down the street. Fun!