When to go to the police, and what to bring
Sharing private sexual images without consent is a criminal offence in a growing number of countries, and threatening to share them almost always is. Here is when it is worth reporting, and how to make the report land.
If you were under 18 when the video or photo was made, stop here. That is a different and much more serious category, it is illegal to possess and share in essentially every country, and it has dedicated routes. Contact the police, and use Take It Down, run by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Do not use a general purpose search tool, including ours, for that.
When it is clearly a police matter
Go to the police, without waiting to see whether the site responds, if any of these apply:
- Someone is threatening to share more unless you pay them, send them something, or do what they say. This is blackmail, and it is a crime independently of anything that gets posted.
- You were under 18 when the material was made, regardless of your age now.
- It is part of a pattern of harassment from someone you know: repeated contact, threats, showing up, contacting your family or your workplace.
- Your address, workplace, school or phone number was posted alongside it. That turns a privacy violation into a safety problem.
- You were drugged, coerced, or the recording itself was made without your knowledge. The recording may be an offence on its own, separate from the sharing.
When it is a judgement call
If an ex posted a video you agreed to being filmed, is not threatening you, and has no ongoing contact with you, many people choose to focus on removal and skip the police entirely. That is a reasonable choice. Things worth weighing:
- Reporting creates a record, which matters a great deal if it happens again.
- In several countries this specific act is now a named offence rather than something that has to be squeezed into an older law, which has made reports more likely to go somewhere.
- A police report can, on some platforms, move a stalled removal request along.
- It also costs time and requires retelling the story, and you are allowed to decide that is not what you want right now. You can report later. Keep the evidence either way.
What to bring
Turn up organised. This is the single biggest thing within your control, and it changes how the report is handled.
- A one page summary. Who, what, when, in plain order. Written down, so you do not have to narrate it.
- Every link, in full, one per line.
- Screenshots of each page showing the address bar and the date.
- Every message from the person: texts, direct messages, emails. Screenshots plus the original account name and handle.
- Dates: when it was filmed, when you found it, when each copy appeared if you know.
- What you have already done: which sites you reported to and when, with reference numbers if you got any.
If you have run a check here, export the results. A list of every copy with the site, the link and which seconds of your video appear where is more useful to an officer than a description, and it shows the scale of the spread rather than one example of it.
How to ask
Use the specific words. Ask to report the non-consensual sharing of intimate images, and if you are being threatened, say blackmail or extortion. Naming the offence rather than describing the situation gets you to the right form and the right person faster. If the first officer seems unsure, it is reasonable to ask whether the force has a unit that deals with online offences or image based abuse.
Ask for a reference number before you leave, and ask what happens next and roughly when. If nothing happens, that number is what you follow up with.
Do this in parallel, not afterwards
A police report does not remove anything from the internet. Removal is a separate track, it is usually faster, and it does not need permission from anyone. Report it to the sites, register it with StopNCII so copies get blocked before they are posted, and keep the police report running alongside.
If you have not yet found all the copies, that is the step that everything else depends on.
We are not lawyers and this is not legal advice. Rules differ by country and by site. If money, threats or a minor is involved, talk to the police or a lawyer first.