Sextortion is the threat to expose sexual images of someone unless they pay money, send more images, or harm themselves. It is a federal crime in the United States, regardless of the victim's age. The FBI took over 13,000 reports last year alone, and the number is climbing.
If you're reading this because you, your child, or someone you know is going through this right now, skip to the "First 30 minutes" section below. Everything else can wait.
The pattern
Sextortion attacks against minors usually follow this exact sequence, and recognizing the sequence early is what prevents the worst outcomes:
- Initial contact on a platform popular with kids — Instagram, Snapchat, Discord, TikTok, Roblox, or one of the many smaller gaming chat rooms. The attacker pretends to be a peer of similar age.
- Rapid trust-building. Flirting, compliments, frequent contact, moving the conversation to a private channel. Researchers call this the grooming phase — it often lasts only a few days.
- Image exchange. Either the attacker sends a stolen nude image first and asks for one back, or escalates direct requests.
- The flip. As soon as the victim sends an image, the attacker reveals themselves and threatens to send the image to the victim's parents, school, friends list, or social media followers unless certain demands are met.
The demand is usually one of three things:
- Money — most common with male victims (the Nigerian-scam-style
pattern, hundreds of dollars to thousands)
- More images — most common with female victims, escalating
demands over time
- Self-harm — the worst pattern, associated with violent online
groups that pressure minors to harm themselves or animals as proof for the group
The crime is the same regardless of demand. The response below applies in all three cases.
First 30 minutes
1. STOP responding to the attacker
Do not reply, do not negotiate, do not pay, do not send another image. Block the account.
Every documented case shows that paying does not stop the threats — it escalates them. Attackers who get paid once always come back for more. The leverage they have over the victim is the threat of exposure; paying does not remove that threat, it confirms the victim is a paying target.
2. Do NOT delete anything yet
You need the messages, the screenshots of the threats, the attacker's username, the platform, and any payment information they asked for. Take screenshots first. Capture: the entire conversation, the attacker's profile, the timestamp of the first message, any account numbers or payment apps they specified.
Save the screenshots to a separate folder — phone-photo album AND emailed to yourself, in case the phone-photo album is deleted later.
3. Report to the platform
Each major platform has a dedicated path. Use the "threatening, blackmail, or sextortion" category if available:
- Instagram / Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/help/contact/567360146613371
- Snapchat: https://help.snapchat.com/hc/en-us/requests/new
- Discord: https://dis.gd/request
- TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/safety/en/report-a-concern/
- Roblox: https://www.roblox.com/abusereport
- X / Twitter: https://help.x.com/en/forms/safety-and-sensitive-content
- Telegram: forward the message + attacker username to abuse@telegram.org
4. Report to the FBI (regardless of victim age)
File at https://www.ic3.gov — choose "Sextortion" as the category. This creates a federal record and triggers the FBI's coordinated take-down network with the major platforms.
If the victim is a minor
There are two additional steps that are critical:
5. NCMEC's Take It Down service
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children runs a free automated service that generates digital fingerprints of the specific images and submits them to participating platforms (Meta, OnlyFans, Pornhub, MindGeek, Yubo, and others) so they automatically block uploads of those images.
The images never leave the victim's device. Everything is hashed locally and only the hash is sent.
→ https://takeitdown.ncmec.org
6. NCMEC CyberTipline
File a CyberTipline report. NCMEC works with the FBI and local law enforcement on every report:
→ https://report.cybertip.org/
7. NCMEC's crisis support for the victim
Trained counselors, free, available 24/7:
→ 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678)
What NOT to do
- ❌ Do not pay. Ever. Not even a small amount. Not "to buy time."
- ❌ Do not send more images. This is the same trap.
- ❌ Do not let the victim harm themselves. The threats are
leverage. They are not facts about how the victim's life will turn out. Recovery is the normal outcome of reported cases.
- ❌ Do not delete evidence before reporting.
- ❌ Do not confront the attacker yourself.
- ❌ For parents: do not punish the kid. Punishment after a
sextortion case is the single biggest reason kids don't report the next time. Sextortion happens to children who made one bad decision — the response is treatment, not punishment.
What to say to a kid who's been sextorted
The leverage that makes sextortion work is the victim's belief that their life is over if anyone finds out. Your job as a parent is to break that belief, immediately.
Things to say:
- "I am not angry. I am scared, and we are going to fix this together."
- "What you sent does not define you. What we do next does."
- "You are not in trouble with me. The person doing this is the
criminal here, not you."
- "We're going to call the FBI tonight, and we're going to call the
Take It Down service. Then we're going to sleep."
- "You don't have to tell me everything right now. We have time."
Things NOT to say:
- "How could you do this?"
- "What were you thinking?"
- "We're taking your phone away."
- "If you're lying about anything I will find out."
Take a breath before you respond to your child the first time. The first sentence out of your mouth is the one they remember.
After the immediate crisis
- Talk to a counselor. Sextortion has documented long-term
effects that are highly treatable. Pediatrician referral is the fastest path.
- Re-tighten privacy on accounts. Private profiles, DMs blocked
from non-followers, two-factor enabled, password changed.
- Don't take the phone away long-term. For a kid, the phone is
their connection to the world. Cutting them off after a sextortion case sends the message that this is shameful, which is the wrong message and the wrong outcome.
- Watch for re-extortion. Attackers who get paid (or who failed
to get paid) often try again with the same victim or pass the victim's contact to other attackers. The same response applies.
How parents can prevent this
Five things:
- Have the conversation BEFORE it happens. Tell your kid the pattern (you might get flirty messages, they might escalate fast, they might ask for images — if any of that happens, come to me first, you will not be in trouble). The conversation IS the prevention.
- Don't make the phone the punishment lever. Phone privileges should not be your default consequence for unrelated misbehavior — if you do that, the phone becomes the thing the kid will lie about when something serious happens.
- Talk about specific apps. Roblox and Snapchat are where most of the contact starts. Discord is where the grooming continues. Knowing the platforms means you can ask specific questions.
- Check whether your kid is in mental-health support groups online. Attackers target these groups specifically because they are full of vulnerable kids. Be careful here — don't shut down the legitimate ones — but be aware they exist.
- Tell your kid about Take It Down (https://takeitdown.ncmec.org) BEFORE they ever need it. Knowing the recovery path is available removes the "my life is over" leverage in advance.
Related free tools
generates a customized plan in 30 seconds based on victim age, platform, and whether anything was paid
scam patterns for older relatives (overlaps with sextortion patterns aimed at older men)
- WhatsApp Scam Checker — WhatsApp-
specific scam patterns
- Telegram Scam Checker — Telegram-
specific patterns
Resources
- FBI IC3 — https://www.ic3.gov (file an IC3 report — the formal
federal channel)
- NCMEC Take It Down — https://takeitdown.ncmec.org (free image
takedown service)
- NCMEC CyberTipline — https://report.cybertip.org/
- NCMEC 24/7 helpline — 1-800-THE-LOST (1-800-843-5678)
- Crisis Text Line — text HOME to 741741
- 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline — call or text 988
This page is educational, not legal advice. Sextortion cases should be reported to law enforcement regardless of any plan generated from this page. SafeCadence is not a substitute for the FBI, NCMEC, or qualified legal counsel.