Glossary · Safety
Sextortion
Sextortion is blackmail with sexual images: an offender obtains or claims to have intimate images or video of a person and threatens to publish them unless paid or given more images. It is a crime in most jurisdictions, it increasingly targets teenagers and young men through social media, and the images are often obtained by deception, recorded without consent or fabricated with AI.
Updated November 6, 2026 · 2 min read
What are the common forms?
| Form | How it starts | Typical target |
|---|---|---|
| Financial sextortion | A fake profile flirts, exchanges images, then demands money | Teenage boys and young men; organised groups abroad |
| Relationship-based | A former partner threatens to share images from the relationship | Any age; overlaps with NCII law |
| Video-call recording | A call is recorded or faked and played back as a threat | Common in India's "video call scam" reports |
| Fabricated images | A deepfake made from ordinary photos is used as the threat | Anyone with public photos |
Is it a crime?
Yes, almost everywhere, under extortion, blackmail, harassment or image-based abuse provisions. The United States added the Take It Down Act in 2025, the United Kingdom covers threats to share under the Online Safety Act amendments, and India prosecutes under the IT Act and penal code provisions. Where the offender is abroad, prosecution is rare but reports still feed takedowns and account bans.
Do the images get published?
In financial sextortion, often not: the threat is the product, and publishing ends the leverage. In relationship cases and with fabricated images, publication is more common. A reverse face search can show whether images have reached public pages, which tells a victim what to report. It cannot see private groups, direct messages or members-only sites, where most such material circulates, so a clean result is not reassurance.
How does hash blocking help?
Services such as StopNCII and Take It Down compute a perceptual hash of the image on the victim's own device and share only the hash with participating platforms, which then block uploads that match. The image itself never leaves the victim's phone.
Questions
Should I pay once to make it stop?
No. Agencies report that payment is followed by further demands. Stop contact, preserve evidence, report, and use the hash-blocking services.
They say they have a video but I never sent one. Is it real?
Often it is a bluff, sometimes a fabricated image. Treat it the same way: do not pay, do not engage, report.
Sources
- 1.FBI, Sextortion (scams and safety) (checked November 6, 2026)
- 2.NCMEC, Take It Down (checked November 6, 2026)
- 3.StopNCII.org (checked November 6, 2026)
Entry reviewed November 6, 2026. Found an error? Tell us.
Related entries
- Term NCII (non-consensual intimate images) NCII defined: non-consensual intimate images, real or synthetic, the laws covering them in the US, UK, EU, India and Australia, and the removal routes.
- Term Romance scam Romance scam defined: fraud through a false online relationship, the reported losses, the scripts and photos behind them, the law, and where victims report it.
- Term Deepfake Deepfake defined: faces, voices and video synthesised or swapped by machine learning, how they are made and detected, and the laws that cover them.
- Directory Helplines for image abuse, scams and online harm, by country Helplines and reporting portals for image abuse, sextortion, romance fraud, stalking and crisis in the US, UK, India, Canada, Australia and Europe.
- Directory Removing intimate images shared without consent, by country Intimate image removal routes in 11 countries: the law, where to report, the platform deadline and the helpline, from the US and UK to India and Brazil.
- Organisation National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) The US clearinghouse for child exploitation reports: the CyberTipline, the Take It Down hashing service for minors' intimate images, and how to use them.
Cite this entry
FaceSearch Wiki editors. "Sextortion". FaceSearch Wiki, updated November 6, 2026. https://facesearch.wiki/glossary/sextortion/