Remove Your Home Photos from Zillow in 10 Minutes

Your old real estate listing photos are still online, and they're giving criminals a detailed blueprint of your home.

Tech journalist Kim Komando discovered just how easy it is for anyone to find a home address and immediately pull up interior photos on Zillow. She found detailed images showing room layouts, entry points, windows, and even where security cameras are mounted.

Police across the country are seeing this pattern play out. In Scottsdale, Arizona, two teens dressed as delivery drivers forced their way into a home while searching for cryptocurrency. In Riverside, California, detectives routinely find Zillow and Redfin searches on phones seized from arrested burglary suspects.

A former NYPD detective explained that modern burglars can gather better intelligence from their couch with a laptop than they ever could sitting outside a house with binoculars. The scale of the problem is massive: Zillow's database covers over 160 million homes, and listing photos often remain online years after a home is sold.

The good news? You can remove these photos yourself in about 10 minutes.

For Zillow, sign in and click your profile icon, go to "Your Home," claim your address, then edit and delete the photos. Redfin and Realtor.com have similar owner dashboards where you can hide or remove listing photos with just a few clicks.

Google Street View also allows homeowners to request blurring of their property through a simple form on Google Maps. Once your home is blurred, the change is permanent.

The Bright Side

Real estate agents are now proactively helping former clients protect their privacy. Many are pulling old listing photos from the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) upon request, which eventually removes them from feeder sites across the internet.

Security experts are spreading awareness about these simple privacy controls that most homeowners don't know exist. The tools have been there all along, and now people are learning how to use them to protect their families.

Taking control of your digital footprint doesn't require technical expertise or expensive services. Sometimes the most powerful protection is knowing which buttons to click.