Someone is threatening to share private photos of me
If somebody is threatening to send private photographs or video of you to your family, your friends or your workplace unless you pay them, please read the next three lines and then act. Do not pay. Do not send anything else. Do not delete the messages. This is a crime being committed against you, it is common, and there are Australian services whose entire job is helping people out of exactly this. You are not the first person they will speak to today.
Last checked: 15 August 2026. Every official Facebook, Instagram and Australian government link on this page was opened and confirmed working on that date. If you find one that no longer works, please tell us and we will fix it, because a dead link on a page like this is worse than no page at all.
What is happening
This is called sextortion, and it is an organised crime carried out at scale, usually by groups working through scripts. It very often begins with a friend request or a message from an attractive stranger, a conversation that moves quickly to something private, and then a demand. Sometimes the account used is a real person's, stolen for the purpose, which is why a message can appear to come from somebody you know.
It happens to adults of every age, including people in their seventies and eighties, and it happens to sensible people. The script is refined against thousands of victims. The shame it produces is not incidental, it is the mechanism, because somebody too embarrassed to tell anybody is somebody who keeps paying.
What actually happens if you do not pay
You deserve a straight answer rather than reassurance. In the large majority of cases, when a person stops responding, nothing is sent. The threat is the product. These are volume operations, and once it is clear no money is coming, the effort moves to the next person, because there are many.
Paying, by contrast, marks you as somebody who pays. The most common outcome of a first payment is a second demand, and then a third. This is the consistent finding of the organisations that handle these cases, and it is why every one of them says the same thing: do not pay.
What to do now
- Stop replying. You do not need to explain, argue or negotiate. Silence is a complete answer.
- Do not pay. Not a first payment, not a smaller one, not a final one.
- Keep the evidence. Screenshot the messages, the profile, the username and any payment details demanded, before you block. This is what allows police and eSafety to act.
- Then block and report the account on the platform it happened on.
- Report it. The Australian services are listed below and they are free.
- Tell one person you trust. This is the hardest step and it is the one that helps most, because the whole thing runs on you feeling alone with it.
Who to contact in Australia
The official page for this situation:
ACCCE: report online child sexual exploitation
https://www.accce.gov.au/report
The Australian Centre to Counter Child Exploitation. If the person being threatened is under 18, this is the right place, and it should be reported even if the young person does not want to. There is no situation where a child is at fault here.
The official page for this situation:
https://www.esafety.gov.au/report
eSafety can act to have intimate images removed from platforms, which is a power ordinary reporting does not have. This is the route to use if images have already been shared or you fear they will be.
The official page for this situation:
https://www.cyber.gov.au/report-and-recover/report
Routes the report to police and gives you a reference number. Blackmail is a criminal offence and this is a criminal matter.
If money has changed hands, ring your bank straight away, then Scamwatch. IDCARE, on 1800 595 160, is free and will talk it through with a real person, which many people find is the thing that makes the rest possible.
If you are in immediate danger, ring 000.
Getting images taken down
If images have already been shared, or you believe they will be, eSafety is the service with actual power here. The Commissioner can require platforms to remove intimate images shared without consent, and works directly with the major platforms to do it. That is a genuine legal power rather than an ordinary report form.
What eSafety can and cannot help with is set out plainly here: what you can report to eSafety.
If it is happening to a young person
If the person being threatened is under 18, report it to the ACCCE, and do so even if they are frightened and would rather you did not. This is treated extremely seriously and the child is never in trouble. The single most important thing an adult can do is make it clear, immediately and without qualification, that the young person is not in trouble and that this is being done to them rather than by them.
Grandparents are sometimes the first person told, precisely because a young person is afraid of their parents' reaction. If that is you, the calm response is the useful one: they are not in trouble, it is not their fault, and you will help them sort it out.
If your account was taken as part of this
Sometimes the account being used to threaten you is your own, or the images came from an account somebody took over. Securing the account is a separate job from the threat and both are worth doing.
The official recovery routes are on the recovery router.
One last thing
The people doing this rely on you being too ashamed to tell anybody. That is not an accident, it is the whole design. Telling one person, or one of the free services above, is what ends the isolation the whole thing depends on. The people who answer at those services have heard this many times before, today, and they will not be shocked and they will not judge you.
Related pages on this site
- The recovery router , if an account was taken too.
- If money has been paid .
- How to spot a scam .
- Banking online safely .
Frequently asked questions
Should I pay if someone threatens to share my private photos?
No. Every Australian service that handles these cases advises against it, for a practical reason rather than a moral one: paying identifies you as somebody who pays, and the most common result of a first payment is a second demand. When a person stops responding, in the large majority of cases nothing is sent, because the threat itself is what these operations are selling.
Should I block them straight away?
Screenshot everything first, then block. The messages, the profile, the username and any payment details are the evidence that lets police and eSafety act, and blocking first can lose access to all of it. Once you have the record safely captured, block and report the account on the platform, and stop replying entirely.You do not owe them an explanation, a final message or a negotiation, and silence is a complete answer.
Who do I report sextortion to in Australia?
ReportCyber routes it to police, and blackmail is a criminal offence. eSafety can require platforms to remove intimate images shared without consent, which is a real legal power. If the person threatened is under 18, report to the ACCCE. If money has gone, ring your bank first, then Scamwatch. All of these are free.All of these are free, and none of them will judge you, because they deal with this every day of the week.
What if the photos have already been shared?
Report to eSafety, which is the service that can require platforms to take intimate images down rather than merely asking. Keep the evidence, including where you saw them and any usernames involved. It is worth telling one person you trust as well, because the isolation is the part that does the lasting damage and it is the part that is easiest to fix.
It is happening to my grandchild. What should I do?
Tell them immediately and plainly that they are not in trouble and that this is being done to them, because fear of that reaction is what stops young people speaking up. Keep the evidence, do not let them pay, and report it to the ACCCE even if they would rather you did not. Young people are never at fault in these cases and it is treated very seriously.