A revenge porn lawsuit lets you sue the person who shared intimate images of you without consent, and federal law gives you a direct right to recover $150,000 in liquidated damages plus attorney’s fees even if you can’t pin down an exact dollar figure of harm.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 6851 – Civil Action Relating to Disclosure of Intimate Images You can also get court orders forcing deletion of every copy and barring the perpetrator from sharing the material again. Every state has its own law covering this conduct, and traditional privacy claims give you additional paths to compensation.
What You Can Sue Under
The strongest tool for most victims is 15 U.S.C. § 6851, the federal civil cause of action for nonconsensual disclosure of intimate images. You file in federal district court against anyone who shared your intimate images knowing you hadn’t consented, or recklessly ignoring whether you had.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 6851 – Civil Action Relating to Disclosure of Intimate Images The disclosure only has to involve interstate commerce, which covers essentially anything posted online or sent electronically.
The statute kills the most common defense before it starts: the fact that you originally shared the images with someone does not prove you consented to further distribution. Agreeing to be photographed is not the same as agreeing to have those images posted online.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 6851 – Civil Action Relating to Disclosure of Intimate Images Consent must be affirmative, voluntary, and free from force, fraud, or coercion.
You need to be identifiable in the images, but your face doesn’t have to be visible. A distinctive tattoo, birthmark, or recognizable feature works, and so does identifying information displayed alongside the image.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 6851 – Civil Action Relating to Disclosure of Intimate Images
A few categories sit outside the statute. It doesn’t cover commercial pornographic content unless it was produced through force or coercion, images shared in good faith with law enforcement, disclosures during legal proceedings, medical uses, reports of unlawful conduct, or disclosures involving a matter of genuine public concern.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 6851 – Civil Action Relating to Disclosure of Intimate Images
Alongside the federal claim, your attorney will typically plead state law claims. All 50 states and Washington, D.C. now have statutes covering nonconsensual intimate imagery, and many create streamlined civil claims with their own damages or fee-shifting provisions. Three common law torts also apply: public disclosure of private facts (publicity of private information a reasonable person would find highly offensive); intentional infliction of emotional distress (useful where the posting was part of threats, extortion, or a harassment campaign); and breach of confidence (where images were shared inside a relationship with an implied expectation of privacy). You don’t pick one. The complaint stacks whatever combination gives you the strongest position.
Who You Can Name as a Defendant
The obvious defendant is the person who originally posted or distributed the images, usually a former partner who had access to the material during the relationship. Their intent to cause harm, or reckless disregard for your privacy, is the heart of the case.
People who found the content and shared it further can also be sued. Each additional act of distribution is a separate privacy violation. Identifying these secondary distributors often means tracing activity across multiple platforms and forums, which is one reason evidence preservation matters so much early on.
When intimate images circulate inside a workplace and management knew or should have known, the employer can face liability for allowing a hostile work environment. The exposure typically comes from the failure to act once the harassment became apparent: ignored HR complaints, widespread circulation among staff, or a pattern of brushing off reports.
Platforms are harder. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act generally shields websites from being treated as the publisher of what their users post.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 47 USC 230 – Protection for Private Blocking and Screening of Offensive Material That immunity falls away if the platform actively helped create the content or specifically encouraged users to post nonconsensual material. Section 230 also doesn’t apply to intellectual property claims, which is why copyright plays a role in the removal strategy below.
When the poster hides behind a fake name, you can still file. A “John Doe” complaint names an unidentified defendant and lets your attorney issue subpoenas to internet service providers and website hosts for IP addresses and account registration details tied to the upload. Once you know who’s behind the account, the complaint is amended to name them.
What You Can Recover
Under the federal statute, you choose between your actual damages or liquidated damages of $150,000, plus reasonable attorney’s fees and litigation costs.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 6851 – Civil Action Relating to Disclosure of Intimate Images The liquidated damages option matters because you don’t have to prove exactly how much money you lost. If your actual damages exceed $150,000, you can pursue the higher amount. The fee-shifting provision makes it easier to find an attorney willing to take the case.
Actual damages, usually pursued under state law claims alongside the federal count, cover both economic and non-economic losses. Economic losses include therapy, which typically runs $100 to $300 per session and can accumulate over months or years, along with lost wages, career setbacks, and relocation costs. Non-economic damages compensate for anxiety, depression, isolation, and ongoing psychological harm.
Reputation management services that work to suppress or remove images from search results generally cost between $500 and $5,000 per month depending on severity, and those costs are recoverable as damages you had to spend to limit the harm. Costs for changing phone numbers, cybersecurity monitoring, and similar mitigation efforts fall into the same category.
State law claims can also support punitive damages. Juries have returned very large verdicts in the right cases. A Texas jury returned a $1.2 billion verdict that included $1 billion in punitive damages against a perpetrator who posted intimate images of his former partner. A California case produced a $6.45 million award, and a Maryland jury awarded $500,000. These are outliers; most cases settle for far less. They do show how seriously courts take the conduct.
Beyond money, you can ask the court for a permanent injunction requiring the defendant to delete every copy in their possession and stop all further distribution.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 6851 – Civil Action Relating to Disclosure of Intimate Images Unlike a platform takedown, an injunction is enforceable by contempt. Violation means fines or jail.
Getting the Images Taken Down While the Case Moves
Most victims want removal at least as much as money. Use every pathway at once rather than waiting for one to work.
The Take It Down Act, signed into law in 2025, requires covered platforms to remove properly reported nonconsensual intimate images, including AI-generated fakes, within 48 hours of a valid takedown request. The law also covers identical copies of reported images. The Federal Trade Commission enforces compliance by treating violations as unfair or deceptive practices.3Congress.gov. The TAKE IT DOWN Act – A Federal Law Prohibiting Nonconsensual Intimate Images Submit removal requests directly through each platform’s reporting tool.
DMCA takedown notices work on any site hosting user content, not just social media. If you took the photo yourself, you own the copyright automatically and can send a formal notice demanding removal. Hosts that ignore valid notices risk losing their safe harbor protection, and many have automated processes that act quickly. If someone else took the photo, you’d need a written copyright assignment from the photographer before using this route. A number of platforms also have voluntary policies to remove nonconsensual intimate content on request regardless of copyright.
Google will remove nonconsensual intimate images from its search results on request. That doesn’t delete the images from the web, but it stops them from surfacing when someone searches your name. You can opt in to proactive filtering that catches additional copies that appear later. Other search engines have their own separate processes.
Evidence to Lock Down Now
The quality of your evidence often decides whether you get a favorable settlement or a hard trial. Start preserving everything the moment you discover the images have been shared.
Record the exact URL of every page where the images appear. Take full-screen screenshots that capture the page content, the URL bar, timestamps, and any surrounding text or comments. Track view counts, shares, and comments to show how far the images have spread. That data feeds directly into your damages calculation.
Save messages between you and the perpetrator in their original digital format, not just as screenshots. The embedded metadata helps authenticate the timeline. Emails and texts often establish the private context of the original sharing, and they sometimes contain admissions, threats to distribute, or extortion demands.
Have your attorney send preservation letters to internet service providers and website hosts early. These companies routinely delete server logs after a short window, often 30 days or less. A preservation letter puts them on notice of their duty to retain IP addresses, account registration details, and upload timestamps. Once that data is gone, identifying an anonymous perpetrator becomes dramatically harder. A party that destroys evidence after proper notice can face sanctions.
Filing Deadlines and the Discovery Rule
Every lawsuit has a filing deadline. Miss it and the claim is permanently gone. For privacy torts and nonconsensual image claims, the limitations period varies by jurisdiction but commonly falls between one and four years. Some state-specific intimate imagery statutes have their own deadlines separate from the general tort limitations period.
The important question is when the clock starts. The default is the date of first posting. But most jurisdictions recognize the discovery rule: if you didn’t know the images had been shared and couldn’t reasonably have discovered the distribution, the clock doesn’t start until you learn about it or should have learned about it through reasonable diligence. Images sometimes circulate for months or years on obscure sites before the victim finds out.
Several circumstances can extend or restart the deadline. If the perpetrator keeps reposting or sharing the content, each new act of distribution can be a fresh violation with its own limitations period. Images circulating in a workplace may qualify as continuing harassment rather than a single event. Active concealment through fake accounts or anonymized uploads can pause the clock until discovery. For victims who were minors when the images were created, many jurisdictions toll the limitations period until age 18.
How the Case Moves
Your attorney files a complaint in civil court laying out the claims and the relief you want. The defendant is formally served and has roughly 20 to 30 days to respond, depending on the court. If you need to proceed anonymously, your attorney can ask the court for permission to file under a pseudonym. Courts frequently grant this in intimate image cases given the nature of the material.
After the defendant answers, the case enters discovery. Both sides exchange documents, answer written questions, and may take depositions. In these cases, discovery often focuses on the defendant’s devices, cloud storage, email accounts, and social media activity, and your attorney works to establish exactly what images were shared, when, where, and with what intent. This is where early preservation letters pay off, because the data they protected becomes the backbone of your proof.
Before trial, both sides typically file motions over evidence and the sufficiency of the claims. If the case survives those motions, settlement talks usually intensify. Most civil cases settle. A settlement in a nonconsensual image case often includes a payment, a binding agreement to delete all copies, a permanent restraining order, and a confidentiality clause covering the settlement terms.
Paying the Lawyer
The federal statute’s fee-shifting provision changes the math. Because 15 U.S.C. § 6851 allows recovery of reasonable attorney’s fees on top of damages, attorneys who might otherwise pass on a case with uncertain damages have more reason to take it.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 6851 – Civil Action Relating to Disclosure of Intimate Images
Many attorneys in this area work on contingency, taking a percentage of what you recover rather than charging hourly. Contingency fees typically range from 25 to 40 percent depending on complexity and whether the case goes to trial. Some jurisdictions cap these percentages, and fees for cases involving minors are often limited to 25 percent.
Filing fees for the initial complaint vary by court but generally run a few hundred dollars. Other costs build as the case progresses: forensic analysis of digital evidence, expert witness fees, deposition costs, and reputation management services to limit harm while the case is pending. Many of these costs are recoverable if you win, but you may need to front them during the litigation.
If There’s Also a Criminal Case
A civil lawsuit runs independently from any criminal prosecution. The government handles the criminal case and focuses on punishment; your civil case focuses on compensating you. The civil burden of proof is lower (more likely than not, rather than beyond a reasonable doubt), so a defendant who beats a criminal charge can still lose a civil lawsuit.
Evidence flows in both directions. If police seize the defendant’s devices and find the images along with evidence of intent, your attorney may be able to access that material in civil discovery. Material you gather for the civil case can be shared with prosecutors.
One conflict to raise early with both your civil attorney and the prosecutor: in some criminal cases, law enforcement has asked victims not to take down images while the prosecution is pending so the evidence remains intact. That’s painful for someone trying to get the material offline. Coordinating a strategy early protects both the criminal case and your wellbeing.