I’ve already checked my neighbourhood; I’m safe for now. What about you?

The pictures in online map and search services like Google’s Street View and Canpages’ Street Scene are known to catch some things they shouldn’t.

But that’s not stopping their growth. Google has added nine new Canadian cities to its immersive and interactive service, and Canpages continues its roll-out of image rich location specific search tools across the country. Based in British Columbia, Canpages, however, has a slight jump on the big guy – it unveiled its service in Canada before Google, and it has got its iPhone app out first, as well.

And it appears to have figured out some legal hurdles, too.

But Google continues to get the lion’s share of media attention and headlines – most recently with news that Toronto actually has two CN Towers (apparently, the result of a picture stitching error)!

More than the occasional glitch, some people are concerned about what else is in the online photos.

“We definitely received a lot of attention around privacy,” acknowledged Olivier Vincent, President and CEO of Canpages, in an interview. “We take it very seriously. We have put in place a whole chain of mechanisms that I think will be a very solid privacy protection environment.”

Notification of any shooting is made known through public notices before it starts (Toronto was under the lens last August). Faces and other recognizable features like license plates are blurred before publication in what Vincent called an irreversible process that cannot be decoded by any user. Original non-blurred files are destroyed.

Users of either service can report a concern – like, something they don’t want to see, or something they don’t want someone else to see – using a feedback mechanism embedded in each image, but the process itself is kind of blurry.

On Canpages, if you click on ‘report a concern’ you are taken directly to a reporting page, with empty forms available to type in text descriptions of your problem. The image you are concerned about is reproduced directly above the blank fields, so you can easily reference it while complaining. This all takes places on what is evidently a page hosted and branded by Canpages.

That’s a bit of a confidence booster, at any rate.

With Google, when I clicked on the ‘report a problem’ link, I was taken to an intermediate Google page, informing me the picture was hosted elsewhere, and that I should click to be taken to that site (hosted the image stitching company, Panoramio).

At that point, I was taken to a registration page, which demanded my username and password! Being taken to a third party site, being asked for more potentially private information, was not reassuring.

Google’s Street View service has been closely watched by privacy advocates since its launch, and with this kind of approach, it probably still will.

Canada’s Information and Privacy Commissioner Jennifer Stoddart wrote a letter to Google, for example, expressing concerns about the service and telling the company it must allow for ‘reasonable consent’ from Canadians before collecting images.

Those pictured in a database have the right to see such images and correct any inaccuracies. There are also concerns about the security of images kept in a company’s database, and where that database (and host server) is actually located.

Canpages, seeing the issues and being a little more proactive here at home, has been in discussion with privacy commissioners at both the provincial and federal level.

“We have provided further details of the service, and we have the blessing from the Privacy Commissioner,” he said.

Unlike, say, Google in Switzerland, where legislators have filed a privacy suit to disable the service. The company is in the legal crosshairs in other countries, too, like the U.K., where it may have violated the Data Protection Act because people were not informed that photos were being taken.

It’s not like you couldn’t notice. The photos are collected by vans that drive around with big honkin’ camera units on the top – like some sort of space observatory dome.

Individual captured images are then stitched together in software, and the resultant panoramic image is authored into a rich media package, with magnifying glass tools, navigation buttons, and drag-able characters that provide a first person perspective.

Google’s images are somewhat less clear and crisp, although they often have a wider perspective. Canpages’ imagery looks sharper, with more detail; the services both offer user-sharing and commenting tools, easily accessible.

Google has added a tool for adding user photos of a location; Canpages plans to add video clips – cool ideas, sure, but both open up even more questions about privacy and surveillance.

Of course, user habits and usage tendencies are being captured in an on going basis, too. Not only are human activities captured in the search imagery, but information about who uses the tools and how are also being tracked.

Online and mobile map searches are giant consumer-behaviour tracking tools, and as convenient as the service is, it is important to be aware of potential downsides.

Get the picture? Have you checked online?