Sextortion help: what to do if someone threatens to expose you

Sextortion is blackmail built on intimacy. Someone obtains, or claims to have, an intimate picture, a video or a sexual chat, and threatens to send it to your family, your employer or your followers unless you pay. Sometimes the demand is for more images instead of money. Sometimes there is no image at all, only the claim of one. Webcam blackmail, in which an explicit video call is secretly recorded and then used as the threat, is one well-known form.

Men are frequent targets. In July 2024 Meta said it had removed about 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria that were attempting financial sextortion, and that the network targeted mainly adult men in the US. The FBI has also warned about sextortion built on manipulated and deepfake images, so a threat can rest on a picture you never took. Whatever the material, the wrongdoing is theirs, and every body quoted on this page treats it as something to report rather than a private embarrassment to manage alone.

The details change, but most cases follow one of a handful of scripts. Recognising yours is the first step to answering it calmly:

• The email that says you were filmed. A message claims the sender hacked your computer and recorded you on an adult site, sometimes quoting a real password from an old data breach, and demands bitcoin. The FTC calls this a scam: pay nothing, delete it, change that password and report it at ReportFraud.ftc.gov.
• The match who records you. Someone met on a dating app or social media moves quickly, steers you to another app and an explicit video call, and records it. The demand follows soon after, and paying seldom ends it.
• The fake findomme. A profile posing as a financial dominatrix collects your confessions, your face or your real name, then demands money to keep them quiet. A genuine findomme takes tributes openly and never threatens exposure.
• The faked image. A photograph from a public profile is manipulated into something explicit and sent back to you with a demand attached.
• The break-in. A guessed password, or a code handed to someone posing as platform support, opens an account, and its private photographs become the threat.
• The rescuer. A company that appears after the threat, offering to make it all disappear for a large fee. There is more on these below.

Advice from the FBI, the FTC, the UK National Crime Agency and the UK Revenge Porn Helpline agrees on the essentials. Work through them in this order:

1. Do not pay, and send nothing more. Paying does not guarantee the material stays private, and demands often continue after money has been sent. If you have already paid, stop there and contact your bank or payment platform.
2. Keep the evidence. Screenshot the messages, the account name, the profile link, any email address and any bank or wallet details they gave. Do not delete the conversation, however much you want to.
3. Stop replying and block them. No explanations, no pleading and no bargaining; silence gives them nothing to work with.
4. Report the account to the platform where the contact happened, and to any platform where images have been posted.
5. Report it to the police. In the US, the FBI takes reports at tips.fbi.gov, on 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324) or through ic3.gov. In the UK, call 101, or 999 if you are in immediate danger.
6. Secure your accounts. Change any password that was quoted or reused, switch on multi-factor authentication, and never give anyone access to your devices or accounts, however helpful they sound.
7. Tell someone you trust. The FTC recommends it, and carrying this alone is harder than it needs to be.

No tool can promise to remove everything from everywhere, but what exists can do a good deal. Know which tool is meant for whom:

• StopNCII.org, for adults. Run by the UK Revenge Porn Helpline, part of the charity SWGfL, it makes a digital fingerprint, called a hash, of each image on your own device. Only the hashes go to partner platforms, so the image itself is never uploaded. You must be the person pictured, 18 or over when it was taken and over 18 now. Its partners page listed 21 platforms when we checked in November 2026, among them Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, Snap, X, OnlyFans and Pornhub.
• The Take It Down Act, in the US. According to the FTC, this law requires platforms to remove intimate images free of charge within 48 hours of a request. If a platform fails to, you can report it at TakeItDown.ftc.gov.
• The Revenge Porn Helpline, in the UK. It supports adults living in the UK and can report private sexual content that has been shared publicly, asking for it to be removed. It cannot remove content sent in private messages.
• Take It Down from NCMEC, for under-18s only. It covers images or videos taken when the person was under 18, also works by fingerprint, and covers only public or unencrypted platforms. Despite the name, it has nothing to do with the US law above.

Frightened people pay quickly, and some companies are built around that. The FTC's alert of October 2026 warns about deceptive sextortion assistance services, and advises searching any company's name with words such as scam, review or complaint before paying it. Every route on this page can be used without hiring anyone.

A threat like this is frightening, and the fear is what the blackmailer is counting on. Instagram's own help pages put it simply: it is not your fault. Talk to someone you trust, and use the services set up for this moment:

• The UK Revenge Porn Helpline, for adults living in the UK: open 10:00 to 16:00, Monday to Friday, with a chatbot called Reiya at any hour.
• US hotlines listed by the FTC: for adults, the National Domestic Violence Hotline on 1-800-799-7233; for minors, NCMEC on 1-800-843-5678.
• Emergency services: 999 in the UK, or your local emergency number elsewhere, if you feel in danger.

This site is for adults, but you may be reading on someone else's behalf. The routes for minors are different. In the US, the FBI points to NCMEC and the FTC to NCMEC's CyberTipline, and the National Crime Agency points under-18s in the UK to CEOP, the Report Remove tool and Take It Down. StopNCII is not for images taken before the person turned 18.

Performers are targeted too, usually with a threat to publish a real name, a face or private content unless She pays or performs. The advice does not change because the work is sex work. A Mistress who receives a threat should not pay or negotiate, should keep every message, stop replying and report the member to the site's support team, and contact the police if She feels unsafe.

If She is the person in an intimate image and was an adult when it was taken, StopNCII.org is open to Her like anyone else, and a Mistress living in the UK can turn to the Revenge Porn Helpline. The online safety guide for Dommes covers prevention: a separate identity, clean files, locked-down accounts and firm boundaries with clients. What counts as a crime varies by country, so a local adviser is the person to ask about remedies.

Much sextortion begins with something you sent: a video call, a picture, a voice note. DominatrixCam is built so that a member sends none of those. A private with one of our own Mistresses is one-way: your camera and microphone stay off, there is no chat box, and She never sees, hears, reads or answers you while it runs. Messages to a Mistress carry text only, so no photograph or file of yours can travel through them.

Nothing here is ever arranged in person, nobody needs your phone number, and every payment stays on the site, so a request to move to another app or to pay someone directly is the moment to stop. Cam2cam exists only in LiveJasmin partner rooms marked ↗, as a paid extra bought in credits on that site; if you use it, keep your face and anything identifying out of frame. The guide to anonymous cam sites explains the other layers of privacy, text domination shows how written orders work without images, and findom cams shows what honest financial domination looks like.