What To Do If Someone Threatens To Leak Your Private Photos

Being faced with a blackmail letter saying that they will expose your personal photographs and videos is frightening, but you are not helpless. Sextortion is a crime, and blackmailers depend solely on the shock, embarrassment, and loneliness of their victims to receive payment, additional content, or cooperation. Every day, thousands of people suffer from this, and there are organised procedures in place to keep your identity safe and prevent any non-consensual content from spreading.

Immediate 5-Minute Checklist: What NOT To Do First

• Do NOT Pay or Send Money: Paying never ends the blackmail; it proves you are cooperative and invites escalating financial demands.

• Do NOT Plead or Argue: Avoid sending emotional voice notes, apologies, or threats. Starve the perpetrator of any panic-driven reaction.

• Do NOT Send More Photos: Blackmailers often promise to delete files if you send ‘just one more video’; they will simply use it for leverage.

• Do NOT Immediately Delete Chats: Deleting the thread on your end erases crucial forensic traces law enforcement requires to track IP addresses and accounts.

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How to Preserve Legal Evidence Before Blocking the Blackmailer

Before breaking off communication, ensure you leave a strong digital footprint:

• Create Full-Screen Captures: Create captures with the extortionist's profile name, alias, user ID, profile URL, phone number, and time-stamped extortion messages.

• Save Chat Messages: In cases where it is a messaging application such as WhatsApp and Telegram, export the original chat logs (with media) to your external or cloud storage drive.

• Document Payment Information: In case the blackmailer has shared their UPI IDs, bank account numbers, cryptocurrency wallet addresses, or phone numbers, make sure you save them.

• Do Not Modify the Files: Make sure the files are not altered in any way to retain the EXIF data in their original state. After saving the files, lock the profile.

How to Stop Images From Leaking Online Using Hashing Tools

However, you may be able to keep your private images safe and stop their upload across various social media sites without giving your real photographs to third parties:

• StopNCII.org (for adults 18 years old and above): This site, backed by the major tech firms (Meta, TikTok, Reddit, and others), creates an irreversibly unique digital hash right on your computer or mobile device. It only uploads the hash string to help the social platforms automatically remove the matching images.

• Take It Down (for minors below 18 years): This is an NCMEC project, which creates a similar hash to prevent the spread of CSAM.

Step-by-Step: How to Report Sextortion to the Cyber Cell and Police

• Contact the National Helpline Number: Call 1930 in India to report cyber extortion and prevent fraudulent bank accounts from functioning further.

• Submit an Online Complaint: Go to the National Cyber Crime Reporting Portal (cybercrime.gov.in) and submit a complaint in either the ‘Women/Child Related Crime’ or ‘Other Cyber Crimes’ sections. Anonymity is possible while submitting the complaint.

• Visit Your Local Police Station's Cyber Cell: Submit a complaint in writing along with the printouts of chat messages, transactions, and profiles of the suspects. Possible complaints under this section would be Section 66E (violation of privacy), 67/67A (transmission of obscene matter) of the Information Technology Act, and criminal intimidation/extortion under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS).

AI Deepfakes and Morphing: What If the Photos Aren’t Even Real?

Criminals have started mining regular pictures posted by you on social media platforms and using AI nudification techniques to create explicit pictures. In case it happens to you:

• Discredit the Images Instantly: You should state right away in your complaint that these are fake images and deepfakes.

• Tap into Your Legal Rights: Production, distribution, or possession of deepfake non-consensual pornography falls within the ambit of cyber laws and carries the same penalty as leaking actual images.

• Utilise Platform Tools: Submit direct complaints about non-consensual synthetic media on the platform hosting the image.

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Image credits: Freepik

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