If someone is blackmailing you on Snapchat, stop responding to them, don’t send money, screenshot the conversation before it disappears, and report what’s happening to Snapchat and to law enforcement. You are the victim of a federal crime, and the steps below are the ones that actually protect you.
Stop Responding and Do Not Pay
End the conversation now. Don’t reply to threats, don’t answer calls, don’t try to reason or negotiate. Every response confirms that pressure works, and the demands escalate from there. The FBI tells sextortion victims to reach out to law enforcement or a trusted adult rather than engage with the person behind the account.
Do not send money, gift cards, cryptocurrency, or more images. Paying almost never ends it. The FBI has found that in financial sextortion cases, offenders often release the victim’s images regardless of whether they receive payment.1FBI. Sextortion Once you pay, you’ve shown you’re a source of money, and the demands grow.
Screenshot Everything Before It Disappears
Snapchat messages vanish by design. That makes this step urgent. Do not delete the chat.
Screenshot the whole thread: every threat, every demand, every image or video the person sent you. Capture their username, their Snapcode, and anything visible on their profile. If you’re worried that screenshots will tip them off, use a second device to film your screen as you scroll through the conversation. That captures everything without triggering Snapchat’s screenshot notification.
If you sent any payments, save the transaction records: date, amount, recipient, payment method. Put all of it into one folder and back it up to a cloud drive or external storage. Law enforcement will want it in chronological order.
Snapchat can hold account records for up to 90 days when law enforcement submits a legal preservation request, with one possible 90-day extension.2Snap. Information for Law Enforcement That clock only starts once police send the request, so your screenshots may be the only surviving record if the blackmailer deletes the account first.
Lock Down Your Accounts
Someone who has your Snapchat has probably tried to find your other profiles, your contacts, and your real identity. Move fast.
- Change your passwords everywhere, starting with email, then every social account, banking login, and cloud storage service. Use a different strong password on each one.
- Turn on two-factor authentication so a stolen password alone won’t unlock your accounts.
- On Snapchat, open Settings, tap “Who Can Contact Me,” and switch it to “Friends.” That blocks messages from anyone who isn’t already on your friends list.3Snapchat Support. I Don’t Want to Be Contacted by People I’m Not Friends With on Snapchat
- Set every profile to its most restrictive privacy setting. Hide your friends list and follower count, and disable the option for strangers to find you by phone number or email.
If the blackmailer already broke into your Snapchat and changed the password, request a reset by SMS or email. If that fails, contact Snapchat Support through their help center to start account recovery.4Snapchat Support. My Account Is Compromised
Blocking the person helps but isn’t enough on its own. They can make a new account. Restricting contact to friends only is what stops a throwaway account from reaching you.
Report to Snapchat
Reporting flags the account for review and possible removal, and it creates a record that supports any later law enforcement request for the account’s data. Reports are handled confidentially.
In the app, open the chat, press and hold on the username, tap “Manage Friendship,” and select “Report.” Pick the category that fits and add any detail you can. After you submit, block the user.
You can also file through Snapchat’s support site, which asks for your username and a follow-up email.5Snap. How to Report a Snap In-app reports automatically include a copy of the reported content, which gives Snapchat’s team more to work with.
Report to Law Enforcement
Blackmail over Snapchat is a crime at both the state and federal level. Under federal law, transmitting a threat across state lines or over the internet with intent to extort money or anything of value carries up to two years in prison when the threat targets someone’s reputation, and up to 20 years when it involves a threat of physical harm.6Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 875 – Interstate Communications You do not need to know the blackmailer’s real name or location to file a report.
Local Police
Start with your local police department or sheriff’s office. Bring your evidence folder. Walk the officer through the timeline: when the person first contacted you, what they demanded, what threats they made, and whether you sent any payments. Ask for a copy of the police report and the case number. You’ll need that number for follow-up and for other agencies.
FBI and IC3
Sextortion almost always crosses state or international lines, so federal agencies are often better positioned to investigate. File a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov. IC3 is the central intake for cyber-enabled crime, and filing there feeds your case into a national database that helps investigators connect patterns across victims.7Internet Crime Complaint Center. Home – Internet Crime Complaint Center
You can also contact the FBI directly at 1-800-CALL-FBI or tips.fbi.gov. The FBI has staff dedicated to sextortion and has investigated thousands of cases.1FBI. Sextortion Snap cooperates with law enforcement and responds to valid legal requests for account records.8Snapchat Support. How Snap Inc. Works with Law Enforcement
Get Your Images Taken Down
Two free services exist specifically to find and remove intimate images from participating platforms. Which one you use depends on age.
Under 18: Take It Down
NCMEC’s Take It Down service at takeitdown.ncmec.org helps remove sexually explicit images or videos taken of someone when they were under 18. The tool generates a unique digital fingerprint, a hash value, from the image on your own device. The image itself never leaves your phone or computer. NCMEC shares only the hash with participating platforms, which use it to detect and remove matching content.9NCMEC. Take It Down The FBI specifically recommends this tool for young sextortion victims.1FBI. Sextortion
18 or Older: StopNCII
Adults can use StopNCII.org, which works the same way. You select the intimate images on your device, the tool creates hash values locally, and those hashes are shared with partner platforms to detect and remove copies. Your images are never uploaded.
If You Already Paid
If you sent money before finding this advice, recovery is difficult but you still have options, and they depend on how you paid.
For credit card payments, call your card issuer right away and explain the payment was made under duress as part of an extortion scheme. You may be able to initiate a chargeback. For peer-to-peer apps like Zelle or Venmo, report the transaction inside the app. Federal law requires banks to reimburse customers for unauthorized transactions, but payments you initiated yourself, even under coercion, sit in a gray area the bank may not automatically reverse.
Report the financial loss to the FTC at ReportFraud.ftc.gov. The form asks what happened, how much you paid, the payment method, and any information about the recipient.10Federal Trade Commission. How to Report Fraud at ReportFraud.ftc.gov Mention your police report and IC3 case number. Your FTC report feeds a database that law enforcement across the country uses to build cases against scam networks.
If the Victim Is a Minor
If you’re under 18, or the victim is, everything above still applies, with additional protections. Under the REPORT Act enacted in 2024, online platforms are required to report child sexual exploitation, including sextortion, to NCMEC’s CyberTipline.11National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. CyberTipline Data Snapchat has a legal obligation to flag this kind of abuse when detected.
The FBI emphasizes that minors are never in trouble for being victims of sextortion, even if the situation started on an app the minor was too young to use, even if the minor initially shared images voluntarily, and even if they accepted money or gifts at some point. The criminal is the person making the threats.1FBI. Sextortion If a young person isn’t ready to talk to police yet, the first step is telling any trusted adult.
Protect Your Mental Health
This matters as much as the legal steps. Sextortion is psychologically devastating. The shame, fear, and isolation victims feel is exactly what the blackmailer counts on. The FBI has documented over 20 deaths by suicide linked to financially motivated sextortion, most involving young male victims.12FBI. The Financially Motivated Sextortion Threat
If you or someone you know is in crisis, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988. You do not have to explain the details of what’s happening to get help.
Talk to someone you trust. The instinct to hide what happened is strong, but secrecy is the blackmailer’s greatest weapon. A parent, friend, counselor, or therapist can help you get through this while the reports work their way through the system. The FBI’s Victim Services Division also provides support for people affected by these crimes.