Someone has made fake or intimate images of me — what can I do?

Two situations lead here: images you shared with someone who is now threatening or publishing them, and images that were never real — a face placed onto another body by software. Both are covered by UK law, both have specialist takedown routes, and the practical steps are largely the same.

Safety

Step by step

1. Preserve the evidence before anything else.Screenshot the images, the profile, the account name, the web address and any messages, with dates. Do not delete conversations. Takedown removes the material and the evidence with it, so capture it first.
2. Do not pay, and stop engaging.Payment produces more demands. Where the approach is financial extortion, cut contact entirely, block, and keep the messages.
3. Use StopNCII.org.It generates a hash — a digital fingerprint — of the image on your own device and shares only the hash with participating platforms, which use it to detect and block matching uploads. The image itself is never uploaded anywhere. It works for adults and it covers synthetic images too.
4. Contact the Revenge Porn Helpline if you are an adult in the UK.A government-funded specialist service that pursues takedowns with platforms directly and has a very high success rate. Free and confidential.
5. Use Report Remove if the person is under 18.Run by Childline and the Internet Watch Foundation. This is child sexual abuse material regardless of who created it, the response is different and urgent, and it should not be handled through adult services.
6. Report to the platform under its intimate image policy.Every major platform has a specific route for non-consensual intimate imagery, separate from ordinary reporting, and it is handled faster. Use that route, not the generic one.
7. Report it to the police.Sharing intimate images without consent is a criminal offence in the UK, and so is threatening to share them. Recent law extends this to images that have been digitally created or altered. Take your evidence and the reference numbers from any takedown requests.
8. Ask for search results to be removed.Google and Bing both operate removal routes for non-consensual intimate imagery, including synthetic images. This is separate from removing the page itself and both are worth doing.
9. Get support for yourself.The helplines above provide emotional as well as practical support, and Victim Support is free and independent. This causes real harm and treating that seriously is part of dealing with it.

Tips

• Takedown is a process rather than an event — the same material can reappear, which is exactly why the hash-based route matters. It keeps working after the first removal.
• You do not have to know who did it to get material taken down. The platforms act on the content, not on the identity of the uploader.
• If someone is threatening to send images to your family or employer, telling one person yourself first removes most of the leverage. That is difficult and it is also the thing that works.

Common mistakes

• Deleting everything immediately — The evidence is needed for the police report and for platform escalation. Capture it, then remove.
• Paying to make it stop — It confirms a paying victim and produces further demands. There is no version of this where payment ends it.
• Using a paid takedown service before the free ones — The Revenge Porn Helpline and StopNCII are free, specialist and effective. Start there.

Questions people ask