Someone is threatening to share intimate images

If this is happening to you right now: stop replying, do not pay, and tell one person. Everything else on this page can wait five minutes. This is a crime being committed against you, it happens to thousands of people, and it ends.

First, which one is it

The mass email. An email says they have hacked your webcam and recorded you, and demands payment in cryptocurrency. It may include a password you recognise, or your own phone number or address to frighten you.

This is almost always a bluff. The password came from a data breach, and the address from the same place or from public records. They have no footage. They send the same message to millions of addresses and collect from the small number who panic.

What to do: delete it. Do not reply, do not pay. If the password shown is one you still use anywhere, change it — that part is real, and our password checker will tell you whether it is circulating in breach data. There is more in a company leaked your data, now what.

Targeted blackmail. Someone you actually talked to, who has actual images, and is naming your family or your employer. This is different and the rest of this page is about it.

If it is real

Do not pay. Paying identifies you as someone who pays. In the overwhelming majority of cases the demands continue, and paying does not get images deleted.

Stop replying. Not out of defiance — every reply gives them information and keeps them invested. Silence is what makes a target unprofitable.

Do not delete anything. Screenshot the profile, the messages, the account name, the payment details. Then stop engaging. Evidence is what makes it actionable.

Deactivate rather than delete your social accounts if you want to disappear for a few days. Deleting destroys evidence and does not remove what they already have.

Tell one person. The isolation is the weapon. It loses most of its force the moment somebody else knows.

Free UK help, quickly

• Take It Down (NCMEC) — if you are under 18, they will get

images removed from the internet, free, and you do not have to speak to police first.

• StopNCII.org — if you are an adult, this creates a digital fingerprint of images *from your own

device*, without uploading them, and participating platforms block matching uploads.

• The police. Sharing or threatening to share intimate images is a crime in the UK. You will not

be in trouble, including if you are under 18 and sent the images yourself.

• the Cyber Civil Rights Initiative helpline, for adults, free and confidential.

If it is happening to someone you know

Say this, and mean it: "I'm not angry, I'm not judging you, and we will sort this out."

Do not ask how they let it happen. Do not tell them to just ignore it. Sit with them while they report it. The reason this is dangerous is shame, not technology, and the antidote is somebody reacting calmly.

The thing worth repeating

This happens to careful people, to sensible people, to people of every age. The people doing it are organised, they do it at scale, and they are practised at it. Nothing about being targeted reflects on you.