Any villains inspired to check Google Street View to see whether a personal visit to the Buckinghamshire village of Broughton might be profitable, have been confounded. The residents formed a human hoarding to block the camera's view of their streets, then forced its vehicle into ignominious retreat.

In the satellite images on Google maps the village looks jolly nice: back gardens the size of small parks, swimming pools, tennis courts, two cars parked outside most of the large houses, a smart pink parasol behind one house on London Road.

But a note on the Google website says, of Broughton, "no street view", a sign that usually means the area has not yet been added to the millions of photographs that now reveal aspects of towns across nine countries and three continents - in brick-by-brick detail.

In fact, once Paul Jacobs spotted the Google camera when he glanced out his window on Wednesday, the photographers did not get far. The car was an unmarked black Opel, but the 360-degree camera on the roof was a bit of a giveaway. Jacobs rushed round banging on neighbours' doors, and soon had a posse surrounding the driver. When one of the residents called the police, there was a swift U-turn. Jacobs said there had been three burglaries in the last six weeks: "If our houses are plastered all over Google, it's an invitation for more criminals to strike."

Google was inundated with complaints of privacy being invaded in the days after it launched the British street view service.

A Google spokeswomansaid householders were entitled to request their property be removed from the site, and that the site blurred faces and car number plates, so did not break privacy laws.