Have you ever wanted to know what Miley Cyrus’s house looks like? If so, you’re not alone. In the month of November, her house ranked the highest “virtually visited” celebrity home, with over 10,000 views, followed by Will Smith’s house with over 8,000 views. If you click on Miley Cyrus’s name, you are directed to a page which includes images and information such as how much Cyrus paid (approximately $2.5M), when (in 2016), and who owned it before (Thomas Gottshalk, a German radio/TV host).
Where can you find such information?
Started in 2005, the Internet site, Virtual Globetrotting, provides all manners of global satellite imagery, including aerial and street views, on celebrity homes, military installations, famous tourist destinations around the world, as well as non-celebrity properties and landscape locations. It also includes a section where users can actively participate in virtual scavenger hunts and safaris. The site is crowd-sourced by community members using the Maps function from Google, Bing, and Yahoo. Community members upload their latest finds, submit it to a Virtual Globetrotting moderator, who reviews the content and either accepts or declines the contribution. The site encourages users to submit photos from all the places they travel—think of it as the world’s favorite (or not) photo album.
As a private investigator, you may have a celebrity client who values her privacy (who doesn’t?) and wants her home taken off the site. The site’s Map Changes and Removal and Privacy Policy is a good starting point. You can contact them on their Contact Us page and request that, for privacy purposes, you wish to have your client’s information removed. Hg recommends including the Virtual Globetrotting link in your request. Site administrators will scrub all personal information, including removing the links to the mapping services, the location, and the city.
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