Get help now
Whatever happened, you are not in trouble.
If someone is threatening you over a photo, pushing you to meet, or already knows where you live, this page tells you what to do. Pick the one that matches your situation. If anyone is in danger right now, call 911 first.
Start here
What is happening?
Three things that are true no matter which one you picked
- The person doing this is the one who did something wrong.
Not you. NCMEC leads its own advice with that, because feeling ashamed is exactly what stops people asking for help.
- Do not delete anything yet.
Screenshot the messages and their profile first. Those screenshots are what lets anyone actually do something about it.
- Tell one adult.
Not everyone. One. That is the step that ends it.
Someone is threatening to share a nude photo of you
This is called sextortion. It is a crime, and it happens a lot. In 2025 the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children got more than 80,000 reports about sextortion, including an average of 137 reports a day where someone demanded money — 37 percent more per day than the year before (NCMEC CyberTipline data). Most of the people doing this are running the same scam on hundreds of people at once. It is not about you.
Do these five things.
- Do not pay. Do not send another photo.
It does not make them stop. It tells them the pressure is working.
- Stop replying, but do not delete anything.
Keep the messages and their profile. Screenshot the chat and their page. That is what investigators use.
- Report the account in the app first, then block them.
Report, then block. That order matters, because reporting inside the app sends more information than blocking does.
- Use Take It Down if a photo is already out there.
It is free and anonymous, from NCMEC, for anyone worried a nude photo or video of them taken under 18 is online. Your phone makes a code from the photo and only the code gets shared with the apps. Nobody ever sees the photo, and it never leaves your device. If you were 18 or older in the photo, use StopNCII.org instead.
- Tell one adult today.
A parent, a counselor, a coach, a relative, a teacher. If none of those feel possible right now, call NCMEC yourself. A real person answers, any hour.
1-800-843-5678
Call or text
TakeItDown@ncmec.org
stopsextortion.com
An adult is grooming you, or wants to meet up
Grooming is when an adult slowly builds trust with someone your age so they can ask for photos or a meeting later. It usually starts friendly. Common signs: they push to move the chat to a different app, they say you two have a special connection, they ask you to keep it secret, or they send a gift or a game code early on.
What to do. Do not meet them, do not go alone, and do not let them talk you out of telling someone. Keep the messages. Report the account in the app. Then tell an adult and make one of these reports.
1-800-843-5678
dhs.gov/know2protect
childhelphotline.org
Text HOPE to 64673
online.rainn.org
If you are in Maryland: the Maryland Coalition Against Sexual Assault answers general questions at 301-328-7023, and its legal team takes legal questions at 301-565-2277. Both are office lines during the work week, not 24-hour lines.
You are being harassed, bullied, or threatened
What to do. Screenshot it before you block anyone. Report the account in the app. Tell an adult at school if the people doing it go to your school — that is what makes it stop most of the time. If anyone threatens to hurt you, that is not bullying any more, and police should hear about it.
Text SUPPORT to 22368
Call or text
safeschoolsmd.org
Text VOICE to 20121
Someone posted your address, or is stalking you
Doxxing is when someone digs up your real information — your address, your school, your phone number, your parents' names — and posts it. Swatting is when someone calls in a fake emergency to send police to your house. Both are crimes.
What to do. Screenshot where it was posted, including the account that posted it. Report it in the app. Tell your parents, because they may need to talk to your local police. Then go turn off live location sharing everywhere — the sharing list steps take about five minutes.
Call or text
victimconnect.org
Online and financial crimes: 410-887-2190
1-800-843-5678
Your account was taken over, or someone is pretending to be you
What to do, in this order.
- Change the password on your email first.
Your email is the key to everything else. Fix it before you fix the app.
- Turn on two-step verification.
Every app on the lock it down page has it. It is the single thing that stops this happening again.
- Sign out everywhere.
Most apps have a “log out of all devices” button in security settings. Use it.
- Warn your friends.
Whoever has your account will message them next, usually asking for money or a photo.
- Use the app's own recovery page.
Go to the app's help site directly. Do not search for a phone number.
Nobody from these apps will ever call you
If you search for “Instagram support number” or “Roblox help phone,” every number you find is a scam. Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, and Roblox do not run public support phone lines at all. Neither does the FBI's internet crime center, IC3, which says on its own site that it “does not maintain a social media presence” and “will never directly communicate with victims via phone, email, or social media” (IC3 public alert). If someone contacts you claiming to be support and asks for money, a code, or your password, it is a scam. Always start at the app's own help page instead.
You need someone to talk to right now
If you are thinking about hurting yourself, please use one of these before you do anything else. They are free, they are private, and the people answering do this every day.
988lifeline.org
Text START to 678-678
thetrevorproject.org
Text TEEN to 839863
Text VOICE to 20121
childhelphotline.org
For parents, teachers, and counselors
outreach@ncmec.org
Trainings
1-833-591-5669
safeschoolsmd.org
The question everybody asks
“Will I get in trouble for telling someone?”
No. You are not going to get in trouble for telling someone. You are the person this was done to. Reporting it is the right move, and the people who run these hotlines want you to make it. If you sent a photo you wish you had not sent, that does not change any of this.
Here is the proof, if you want to show an adult:
- The US Department of Justice puts it in capital letters in the sheet it hands to teens: “IT IS NOT YOUR FAULT. You have been tricked and you are not alone!” (OJJDP victim resource sheet)
- NCMEC tells young people directly: “Remember, the blackmailer is to blame, not you. Even if you made a choice you regret, what they are doing is a crime.” (NCMEC)
- There is a federal law about this. The REPORT Act, signed in 2024 as Public Law 118-59, says a young person who reports their own photo to the CyberTipline cannot be sued or charged for making that report.
Sources: ojjdp.ojp.gov, missingkids.org, congress.gov.
If someone checks your phone
What Quick Exit does, and what it cannot do
The Quick Exit button in the corner, and tapping Esc twice, sends this tab to a weather page and opens a second tab. Moving between pages here never adds to your back button, so nobody can press Back and land on this site.
It does not erase your browsing history. No button on any website can. If someone might go through your phone, clear it yourself:
- iPhone, Safari. Settings › Apps › Safari › Clear History and Website Data. This clears every site, not just this one.
- Chrome, any phone. Chrome → … → Delete browsing data → pick a time range → Delete data. To remove only this site, use History, search for the page, and swipe or tap the X next to it.
- Next time, open a private tab first. Safari: tap the tabs icon → Private. Chrome: … → New Incognito tab. Nothing you visit in one gets saved to history.
- Watch the address bar too. Even after clearing history, typing the first few letters of a site can bring it back as a suggestion. Clearing browsing data removes those as well.
- If the phone is monitored by a parent app or your school, clearing history may not be enough, and deleting things can itself look suspicious. In that situation use a friend's phone, a library computer, or call instead of browsing.
Menu names shift between phone and browser versions. If yours looks different, search your browser's settings for the word history.
“It is too embarrassing to tell anyone.”
That feeling is the whole plan. The scheme only works if you handle it alone. NCMEC has identified at least three dozen teenage boys in the United States who died by suicide after being targeted this way (NCMEC). Telling one person is the step that ends it. Adults who handle this deal with it constantly, and the reaction you are dreading is almost never the one you get.