What to Do If Someone Is Blackmailing You With Video

If someone is blackmailing you with a video, stop responding to them, save every message and detail before you block anyone, secure your accounts, and report the crime to both local police and the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center. A 2025 federal law also forces online platforms to take the video down within 48 hours of a valid request, and the threat alone is a federal crime whether or not the blackmailer ever posts anything.

Do Not Pay

Paying rarely ends it. The FBI reports that offenders frequently release intimate material whether or not they get paid.¹ A payment tells the blackmailer two things: you have money, and pressure works. Demands escalate from there. Treat the first payment request as the last message you need to answer.

Preserve Evidence Before You Block

Your instinct is to block the account immediately. Wait. On many platforms, blocking a user wipes the message thread between you, which destroys the clearest proof of the crime. Save everything first.

Screenshots of every message, including threats, demands, and anything the blackmailer says they have.
The blackmailer’s username, profile URL, display photo, and any other accounts they’ve linked or mentioned.
Full email headers if contact came by email. Headers carry routing information investigators can use.
Any payment details they sent: PayPal addresses, cryptocurrency wallet IDs, Venmo handles, bank information.
A copy of the video itself if you can access it.

Print the screenshots as soon as you capture them and keep digital copies on an external drive or in a password-protected cloud account separate from your everyday devices. Evidence preserved immediately, with no gap between capture and storage, is harder for anyone to challenge later.

Secure Your Accounts, Then Block

With your evidence saved, lock down everything. Change passwords on email, social media, banking apps, and cloud storage, using a different password for each. Turn on two-factor authentication wherever it’s offered. If the blackmailer got in by hacking an account, this is the step that keeps them out.

Now block the known profiles and phone numbers. Don’t respond to new messages from unfamiliar accounts that might be the same person reaching back out. Silence is your strongest position.

Report to Law Enforcement

File a report with your local police department. Bring printed copies of your evidence, walk the officers through the timeline, and ask for the report number before you leave. You don’t need to hand over the video itself to file.

Blackmail sent over the internet almost always crosses state or national lines, so it’s also a federal crime. File a separate complaint with the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center, the central intake point for cyber-enabled offenses.² The IC3 accepts reports even if you’re not sure your situation qualifies, and the Department of Justice lists it as the primary resource for reporting computer and internet crime.³ If the blackmailer also took personal data and you’re worried about identity theft, report that through IdentityTheft.gov.⁴

Report the Account to the Platform

Every major platform bans blackmail and harassment in its terms of service, and reporting the account is one of the fastest ways to disrupt the blackmailer. Use the report or flag option on the profile or next to a specific message. Pick the closest category, something like blackmail, harassment, or non-consensual intimate imagery. Add a short description and screenshots if the platform lets you upload them. Enforcement teams can suspend or ban the account, and the report creates another record that supports your criminal complaint.

Getting the Video Taken Down

If the video is already online, several tools work in parallel.

Search Engine Removal

Google will remove non-consensual sexual images from its search results on request through a dedicated form.⁵ This doesn’t delete the file from the host site, but it stops the video from surfacing when someone searches your name. Microsoft offers the same for Bing and partners with StopNCII.org to detect and remove matching content from Bing image results automatically.⁶

StopNCII.org

StopNCII.org creates a digital fingerprint, called a hash, of the image or video on your own device. The file never leaves your device. Participating platforms then use that hash to detect and remove matching content, and the service keeps scanning for new matches in case the blackmailer re-uploads.⁷ Only participating platforms check against the hashes, so coverage isn’t universal.

DMCA Takedown

If you recorded the video yourself, you own the copyright and can force hosting sites to remove it. You don’t have to register the copyright first. A valid notice must include your contact information, a description of the work, the specific URL where the infringing copy appears, a good-faith statement that the use is unauthorized, and a statement under penalty of perjury that you’re authorized to act for the copyright owner.⁸ Send the notice to the site’s designated DMCA agent, usually listed in the terms of service or in the U.S. Copyright Office’s online directory.

The TAKE IT DOWN Act’s 48-Hour Rule

The TAKE IT DOWN Act, signed into federal law in 2025, requires online platforms to remove non-consensual intimate imagery within 48 hours of a valid takedown request. A platform’s failure to reasonably comply is treated as an unfair or deceptive practice enforceable by the FTC.⁹ A platform that ignores a valid request is violating federal law, which gives you leverage you didn’t have before 2025.

What the Blackmailer Is Actually Breaking

Several federal statutes cover this conduct, and the penalties are heavier than most people expect.

Threatening to damage someone’s reputation through interstate communications in order to get money or anything of value carries up to two years in federal prison. If the threat escalates to physical harm, the maximum climbs to 20 years.¹⁰ Any message sent over the internet, by phone, or through an electronic service counts as interstate commerce.

The TAKE IT DOWN Act also makes publishing non-consensual intimate imagery its own federal crime, with up to two years in prison when the victim is an adult and up to three years when the victim is a minor. Threatening to publish for extortion or coercion carries the same penalties as actually publishing, and AI-generated deepfakes are treated the same as authentic imagery.⁹

If the blackmailer got the video by hacking your device or accounts, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act adds up to five years in prison for a first offense and up to ten for a repeat offender.¹¹

Suing for Damages

Criminal prosecution punishes the blackmailer. It doesn’t compensate you. Federal law gives you the right to sue anyone who discloses intimate imagery without your consent in a case affecting interstate commerce, and anything involving the internet qualifies.¹²

You can recover your actual financial losses or, if they’re hard to quantify, liquidated damages of $150,000, plus attorney’s fees and litigation costs. A court can also order the blackmailer to stop distributing the imagery and let you proceed under a pseudonym to protect your anonymity.¹²

The statute closes off the most common defense: originally sharing the video with the person does not count as consent to any further distribution.¹²

Protective Orders

You can ask a court for a restraining or protective order barring the blackmailer from contacting you and from sharing the video or other private information. File a petition in your local court and bring the evidence you’ve collected. Many courts issue a temporary order the same day and schedule a hearing within a few weeks to decide on a permanent one. A violation after the order issues is independently enforceable and can lead to arrest.

If the Person Being Blackmailed Is Under 18

Penalties and resources shift when the victim is a minor. Publishing non-consensual intimate imagery of a minor is punishable by up to three years in federal prison under the TAKE IT DOWN Act.⁹ Intimate imagery of a person under 18 may also qualify as child sexual abuse material, which brings significantly heavier federal charges.

The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children runs a free tool called Take It Down that lets minors create a hash of an intimate image on their own device and submit it so participating platforms can detect and remove matching content. The image never leaves the device, and up to 10 files can be processed at a time.¹³ The FBI specifically urges minors to report sextortion and makes clear that the victim is not in trouble.¹

Where to Get Help Right Now

The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative runs a 24/7 crisis helpline at 844-878-2274, staffed by trained representatives who help victims of non-consensual intimate imagery and sextortion with support, referrals, and practical guidance. Interpretation is available in most languages. The FBI can be reached directly at 1-800-CALL-FBI or through tips.fbi.gov, in addition to the IC3 complaint portal.¹

1
Federal Bureau of Investigation. Sextortion
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Internet Crime Complaint Center. Internet Crime Complaint Center
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Department of Justice. Report a Crime or Submit a Complaint
4
Federal Trade Commission. Report Identity Theft
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Google. Remove Personal Sexual Images From Google Search Results
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Microsoft On the Issues. An Update on Our Approach to Tackling Intimate Image Abuse
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StopNCII. How StopNCII.org Works
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 17 USC 512 – Limitations on Liability Relating to Material Online
9
Congress.gov. Text – S.146 – 119th Congress (2025-2026): TAKE IT DOWN Act
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 875 – Interstate Communications
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 18 USC 1030 – Fraud and Related Activity in Connection With Computers
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 15 USC 6851 – Civil Action Relating to Disclosure of Intimate Images
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National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Take It Down