Key takeaways
- Don’t pay: paying almost never stops the threats and often leads to more demands.
- Stop replying, but don’t delete anything: save the conversation, profile and payment requests.
- Report it to the platform and the police; many countries have dedicated cybercrime services.
- Tools such as StopNCII.org (adults) and Take It Down (minors) help block images from being shared.
Sextortion is blackmail: someone has, or claims to have, intimate images of you and demands money, more images or something else, threatening to send them to your family, friends or colleagues. It often starts with a friendly online contact who moves quickly to a video call or an exchange of photos. It happens to people of every age and in every country, and it’s a crime. The shame belongs to the blackmailer, not to you.
If you’re under 18, tell a trusted adult now. The images are illegal for anyone to hold or share, and the police and child-protection services are there to help you, not to blame you.
1. Don’t pay and don’t negotiate
Most sextortion is run by organised groups who target many people at once. Paying shows them you can pay, and the demands usually continue. Many cases end when the victim stops responding and the scammers move on.
2. Stop the conversation, keep the evidence
- Stop answering, but don’t delete the conversation or your account yet.
- Take screenshots of the messages, the threats, the account name and profile link, and any payment details they gave (bank account, crypto wallet, gift card request).
- Note the dates and the platforms used.
- Then block the account and tighten your privacy settings: hide your friends and followers list.
Our guide /blog/online-harassment-how-to-collect-evidence/ explains how to capture messages so they’re usable as evidence.
3. Report it
- To the platform where it happened: social networks and messaging apps act fast on sextortion reports.
- To the police or your national cybercrime service. In Morocco, for example, the E-Blagh platform covers sextortion; in the US, the FBI’s IC3; in the UK, Report Fraud or the police. See /blog/how-to-report-an-online-scam/.
- If the victim is a minor, to child-protection services and hotlines such as NCMEC’s CyberTipline in the US.
4. Stop the images from spreading
Services such as StopNCII.org (for adults) and Take It Down (run by NCMEC, for images taken before age 18) create a digital fingerprint of the image on your own device, without uploading it, and share that fingerprint with participating platforms so they can block it. If an image has already been published, report it to the platform and ask for removal; in many countries, sharing intimate images without consent is a criminal offence.
5. Talk to someone
Being blackmailed is frightening and isolating. Tell a person you trust, and consider contacting a victim support line or a mental-health service in your country. If you have thoughts of harming yourself, call your local emergency number now.
Chameleon AI can store the screenshots as an incident, encrypted on your device so nobody else can open them, with a factual description you can hand to the police.
Frequently asked questions
What if they really do send the images?
Report the posts immediately to the platform, use StopNCII or Take It Down, and tell the police. Many people who receive such messages delete them and recognise them as blackmail. Telling your close ones yourself, if you feel able to, takes away the blackmailer’s power.
They say they hacked my camera, but I never sent anything. Is it real?
Often not. Mass emails claiming to have filmed you through your webcam are a well-known scam, sometimes quoting an old password from a data leak. Change that password, don’t pay, and report the email.
Will I get in trouble for having sent the images?
Adults who were blackmailed are victims. For minors, authorities treat them as victims too. The crime is the blackmail and the sharing, not your trust.
General information to help you get organised, not legal advice. Procedures and numbers can change: confirm them with the office concerned, and in danger call your local emergency number first.
