What to Do If Someone Is Blackmailing You With Nudes

If someone is blackmailing you with nudes, stop responding to them, do not send money, and start saving every message as evidence. What that person is doing is a federal crime that can put them in prison for up to five years, and you have both criminal and civil law on your side. You did nothing wrong. Work through the steps below in order.

Do Not Pay and Do Not Reply

Silence is your strongest move right now. Any response, even a refusal or a plea, confirms the account is active and that pressure works. People who pay almost always get hit with a second demand, then a third. Paying does not delete the images. It only proves you will pay again.

Do not negotiate, do not try to reason with the person, and do not ask for proof. Close the conversation and leave it closed.

Is This a Mass Scam Email or a Real Targeted Threat?

Before you do anything else, figure out which situation you are in, because the response is different.

A huge share of sextortion messages are automated scam emails blasted to thousands of strangers. The usual script claims someone hacked your webcam while you were watching adult content and demands cryptocurrency to keep the “footage” private. To look credible, the email often quotes an old password of yours that leaked in a data breach. The tells: the message is generic, no actual image is attached, and the sender never names anyone you know. If that describes what you received, the sender almost certainly has nothing. Do not reply, mark it as spam, and change that old password anywhere you still use it.

The situation is fundamentally different when someone you actually exchanged images with, through a dating app, social media, or a relationship, is now threatening to share them. That is targeted sextortion, and the rest of this article is for you.

Lock Down Your Accounts

One of the most common pressure tactics is a threat to send the images to your friends and family. You can take that weapon away.

Set every social media profile to private so the blackmailer cannot browse your friends or followers list. Change the password on the account they contacted you through, your primary email, and anything connected to them. Turn on two-factor authentication everywhere you can. Consider temporarily deactivating the specific account the blackmailer is using to reach you; deactivation puts a wall up without erasing your data, and you can reactivate later.

Save Every Piece of Evidence

Your instinct will be to delete the whole conversation and never look at it again. Do not. Those messages are the strongest proof you have, and you will need them for the police, for platform takedown requests, and for any lawsuit.

Screenshot the entire conversation from the first message to the most recent threat. Every screenshot should show the person’s username, profile picture, and the timestamp on each message. Open their profile and copy the full URL; even if they change their display name later, the URL often stays the same and helps investigators locate the account.

Write down every way they have contacted you: phone numbers, email addresses, other handles. If they demanded payment, capture the exact details, whether that is a cryptocurrency wallet address, a Venmo handle, a bank account number, or wire instructions. Those financial breadcrumbs are often what lets investigators identify a person hiding behind a fake profile.

Store all of it somewhere separate from your regular files, like a USB drive or a dedicated cloud account. If the blackmailer deletes their account or you deactivate yours, you still have everything.

Report to Law Enforcement

File a report with your local police department. Bring your evidence on a USB drive or ready to share digitally. A police report creates an official record that strengthens platform takedown requests and any future civil case.

Then file a complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center at ic3.gov.1Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Home Page IC3 is the federal hub for cybercrime reports, and your complaint gets shared with federal, state, and local investigators.2Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3). Complaint Form

Be realistic. When blackmailers hide behind anonymous accounts or work from overseas, investigations move slowly and some never produce an arrest. Filing still matters. Your report feeds databases that help identify repeat offenders and organized sextortion rings, and it builds the record you need if you later sue for damages.

Get the Images Taken Down

Report the blackmailer’s account to whatever platform they are using. Use the report function on their profile or on the messages themselves and choose the most specific option available, usually something like blackmail, intimate image abuse, or harassment.

The 48-Hour Removal Rule Under the TAKE IT DOWN Act

The federal TAKE IT DOWN Act, signed into law in 2025, requires online platforms to maintain a notification process for victims and remove flagged nonconsensual intimate images within 48 hours of notice.3Federal Trade Commission. TAKE IT DOWN Act The law covers both real images and AI-generated deepfakes. If a platform ignores your request, cite this law when you escalate.

Pre-Blocking Images With StopNCII

If you still have the images on your device, StopNCII.org can create a digital fingerprint (called a hash) of each image without the photo ever leaving your device.4StopNCII.org. How StopNCII.org Works Participating platforms scan for matches and remove copies they find, and the service keeps rechecking over time. Current participating platforms are primarily adult content sites, including OnlyFans and Pornhub.5StopNCII.org. Industry Partners Major social media platforms often run their own removal processes; check their help centers directly.

Removing Images From Google Results

You can ask Google to remove links to nonconsensual intimate images from its search results, even while you work on getting the content off the original site. Google accepts requests for real sexual content shared without consent, AI-generated deepfake pornography depicting you, and search results that wrongly associate your name with sexual material.6Google Search Help. Remove Personal Sexual Content From Google Search Submit through Google’s support page. Google can only delist from its own search engine; to pull the content from the hosting website, you still have to go through the site owner or platform.

Sue the Blackmailer for Damages

Federal law gives you the right to sue the person who shares or threatens to share your intimate images. Under 15 U.S.C. § 6851, you can recover either your actual financial losses or $150,000 in liquidated damages, whichever is greater, plus attorney’s fees and litigation costs.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 6851 – Civil Action Relating to Disclosure of Intimate Images The liquidated damages option means you do not have to prove the exact dollar harm; the statute sets a floor.

Two consent points matter here. Agreeing to take an intimate photo is not consent to distribute it. Sending an image privately to one person is not consent for that person to forward it. The statute addresses both situations directly. A court can also issue an emergency restraining order or permanent injunction ordering the person to stop distributing the images, sometimes before the full case reaches trial.

If the Person Being Targeted Is Under 18

When the victim is a minor, the stakes change entirely. Any intimate image of a person under 18 qualifies as child sexual abuse material under federal law, regardless of who took it or how.

Under 18 U.S.C. § 2251, someone who solicits or produces sexually explicit images of a minor faces a mandatory minimum of 15 years in federal prison for a first offense, up to 30 years. A second offense carries 25 to 50 years, and a third ranges from 35 years to life.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 2251 – Sexual Exploitation of Children The TAKE IT DOWN Act also carries enhanced penalties when the victim is a minor.3Federal Trade Commission. TAKE IT DOWN Act

If you are under 18, or you are a parent of a minor being targeted, report to NCMEC’s CyberTipline at report.cybertip.org. NCMEC reviews every report and forwards it to the right law enforcement agency.9MissingKids.org. Sextortion NCMEC also runs Take It Down, a free service at takeitdown.ncmec.org that fingerprints explicit images of minors so participating platforms can detect and remove them without anyone viewing the image.10NCMEC. Take It Down For crisis support, reach NCMEC at 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678) or gethelp@ncmec.org.

Get Help Right Now

Being blackmailed with intimate images is one of the most psychologically devastating things a person can go through. Shame and fear are exactly what the blackmailer counts on, and talking to someone trained to handle this is the fastest way to break the hold.

You are not responsible for someone else’s criminal behavior. The person threatening you committed a crime. You did not.