How to Remove Revenge Porn From Google and the Internet

Last updated: June 2026

Most people who call us about a non-consensual intimate image have already spent a few hours on the wrong forms. They reported the post under “harassment” instead of the platform’s dedicated intimate-image flow. They sent angry messages to the uploader. They Googled themselves and watched the suggestion bar surface the file as an autocomplete. Every one of those actions made the next step harder.

This post is the operational sequence we run when an intimate image of a client surfaces online, whether the image is real or AI-generated. It covers what counts as non-consensual intimate imagery under current US law, how the TAKE IT DOWN Act changed the removal clock in 2026, which platform forms actually work, and what the legal options look like when a host refuses to take the file down. This is not legal advice, but it is the same playbook our content removal practice uses with clients every week.

If a file of you is live right now, the first hour matters more than the next thirty days. Read the first two sections, then start filing.

What Counts as Revenge Porn in 2026

The technical term is non-consensual intimate imagery, or NCII. The category covers any sexually explicit photo or video of an identifiable person that is shared without their consent. The image can be real, edited, or fully AI-generated. The original capture can have been consensual or not. None of that changes whether the distribution is unlawful.

Three subcategories drive most of the cases we see.

The first is classic revenge porn, where an intimate image was captured during a relationship and later shared by an ex without consent. This is still the largest single bucket.

The second is sextortion, where a stranger or organized group coerces a victim into sending an image, then threatens to distribute it unless the victim pays or sends more. The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center received more than 75,000 sextortion submissions in 2025 and referred over 5,700 cases involving minors to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Some FBI field offices recorded year-over-year increases above sixty percent.

The third is AI-generated NCII, where an attacker uses a face photo and a generative model to fabricate explicit content the victim never created. We covered the synthetic-media removal workflow in detail in our deepfake removal guide, and almost every channel below now treats AI-generated intimate imagery and real intimate imagery as the same legal category for removal purposes.

Correctly identifying which bucket a case falls into changes the legal options, the platform form, and the urgency. Misclassifying it routes the report to a slower queue.

The Law Changed in 2026

For a decade, removal of intimate imagery was governed by a state-by-state patchwork. That era effectively ended this year.

The TAKE IT DOWN Act was signed into federal law on May 19, 2025, with a one-year window for platforms to build compliant notice-and-removal procedures. Federal Trade Commission enforcement began May 19, 2026. The Act does two things. It makes it a federal crime to knowingly publish an intimate visual depiction of a minor or a non-consenting adult, including AI-generated depictions. And it requires any covered platform that primarily hosts user-generated content to remove reported NCII within forty-eight hours of a valid notice and to make reasonable efforts to identify and remove identical copies. The Congressional Research Service summary of the Act lays out exactly what a valid notice has to contain.

The forty-eight-hour federal clock is the most important fact in this post. Before May 2026, every platform set its own removal SLA. Some moved within a day. Some took weeks. The clock is now federal, and the FTC has enforcement authority over platforms that ignore valid notices.

Underneath the federal removal mandate, the criminal and civil layers also moved.

On the criminal side, South Carolina became the fiftieth state to criminalize non-consensual distribution of intimate images in May 2025. Every US state and the District of Columbia now has a specific NCII criminal statute. The penalties and definitions vary, but the basic cause of action exists everywhere. State attorneys general and local prosecutors handle these cases. The National Association of Attorneys General maintains an updated state-by-state map of which office takes the complaint.

On the civil side, 15 U.S.C. 6851, enacted as part of the 2022 Violence Against Women Act reauthorization, gives victims a federal civil cause of action against anyone who disclosed an intimate image of them knowing or recklessly disregarding the lack of consent. The statute allows recovery of either actual damages or one hundred fifty thousand dollars in liquidated damages, plus reasonable attorney fees, plus injunctive relief, and permits the plaintiff to litigate under a pseudonym. The Department of Justice Office on Violence Against Women publishes a victim guide to this provision.

Older laws still matter for adjacent cases. The DMCA framework is the right tool when an attacker scraped or repurposed photos you own. State right-of-publicity statutes cover unauthorized commercial use of your image. Section 230 generally protects platforms from being treated as the speaker of third-party content, but the TAKE IT DOWN Act’s removal duty operates outside that immunity, which is part of why the new federal framework matters.

The First Hour

The first hour shapes the next thirty days. Five things should happen before you do anything else.

Preserve the evidence. Capture full-page screenshots of every URL hosting the file, including the URL bar and timestamp. Save the file itself to a private drive that only you and your counsel can access. Do not delete the original message or post from the uploader if they sent it to you directly, no matter how much you want to. Trust and Safety queues and law enforcement both need the record. The Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press publishes general preservation guidance that applies cleanly to NCII cases.

Identify every URL. Run a reverse image and reverse video search across Google Images, Bing visual search, TinEye, and Yandex Images. Mirror copies almost always exist by the time the original poster has had a few hours. Save the URL list. Most clients are aware of two URLs when they call us. The actual count is usually five to fifteen.

Hash the file with StopNCII. StopNCII.org, run by the Revenge Porn Helpline and partnered with Meta, TikTok, Bumble, Reddit, Snap, OnlyFans, Pornhub, X, and others, lets adults hash an intimate image or video locally on their own device. Only the hash leaves your device. Partner platforms then scan for the hash and block matching uploads. For minors, TakeItDown.NCMEC.org does the same thing with the same major partners. Hashing-based removal is the most powerful re-upload control we have, and it remains underused because most people do not know it exists.

Do not engage with the uploader. Replies, screenshots of your reaction, calls, and pleas all feed the file’s reach. They also create digital evidence the uploader can twist into a counter-narrative. Resist the urge. Funnel everything through counsel.

Loop in counsel and, where relevant, law enforcement. Sextortion and minor cases should be reported to the FBI through IC3 immediately. Cases involving minors should also be reported to the NCMEC CyberTipline. Adult cases should at minimum be reviewed by counsel to preserve the 15 USC 6851 civil cause of action and any state criminal complaint.

Platform Removal Forms That Actually Work

Filing through the platform’s dedicated intimate-image flow drops the case into a faster queue than a generic harassment report. The TAKE IT DOWN Act forty-eight-hour clock only runs against a properly formatted notice through the platform’s compliant process.

Google Search removes URLs from search results through its explicit imagery removal request. The same form covers AI-generated explicit content. For non-explicit harassment or impersonation that accompanies the image, Google’s Results about you tool and the legal removal form handle the rest. Google does not host the file. It de-indexes the URL, which is usually what changes what counterparties actually see when they search a name.

Bing uses the Microsoft report a concern form and the Bing content removal tool. Microsoft has been among the more responsive search engines on NCII since 2024.

Meta (Facebook, Instagram, Threads) offers a dedicated intimate-image abuse flow and full integration with StopNCII.org hashing. Meta will block matching hashes across its products before the file is ever uploaded, which is the single most useful preventive control in the playbook.

X uses the non-consensual nudity policy and the synthetic and manipulated media flow. Filing under the wrong policy meaningfully slows the queue.

TikTok prohibits non-consensual sexual content outright under its integrity and authenticity guidelines. Report through the in-app flow first. If the in-app report fails, use the legal report tool.

Reddit uses the involuntary pornography report form and a separate impersonation flow. Reddit will also remove moderators of subreddits that repeatedly host this content, so escalation through contact@reddit.com helps when post-level reports stall.

YouTube routes intimate-image complaints through the privacy complaint process, which now expressly includes synthetic content.

Adult tube sites and amateur platforms have, with limited exceptions, adopted uploader-ID verification and dedicated NCII removal queues since 2020. The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative maintains a current online removal guide for each major property, which we recommend over any list we could publish here, because the URLs and forms shift frequently and a stale list is worse than no list at all.

When the Platform Refuses

Most reports get processed. Some do not. Three escalation paths exist.

A legal-route notice from counsel. A demand letter citing the TAKE IT DOWN Act, the platform’s own intimate-image policy, 15 USC 6851, and the relevant state criminal statute, with the URLs and preservation request attached, gets treated differently from a user report. It often unlocks a manual review queue and shortens response time from days to hours. The American Bar Association and Cyber Civil Rights Initiative legal resources are the standard starting points.

DMCA, where the image is yours. If you took the photo or video, you own the copyright, and a properly drafted DMCA notice forces removal under federal copyright law regardless of the platform’s NCII policy. This works on hosts that drag on intimate-image reports because copyright is a more familiar legal lever for their compliance teams. The notice has to follow the statutory form precisely.

Search-engine de-indexing as a fallback. Even when a host refuses to remove a file, Google and Bing will usually de-index the URL under their explicit-imagery policies. De-indexing leaves the page reachable by direct link but pulls it out of normal search results, which is the layer most counterparties (employers, family, dates, journalists) actually see. Our suppress negative search results practice covers the broader de-indexing and suppression workflow.

When all three escalation paths fail, civil litigation becomes the next lever. The 15 USC 6851 federal civil cause of action with one hundred fifty thousand dollars in liquidated damages, combined with state right-of-publicity, defamation, and emotional distress claims, gives plaintiffs working causes of action in every state. A subpoena to the host or upstream provider can identify the original uploader, which is often necessary for actual damages and for stopping the cycle at its source.

The AI Search Layer

Open-web removal is half the job in 2026. The other half is making sure the AI search layer is not still surfacing the file or its narrative.

ChatGPT search, Perplexity, Gemini, and Microsoft Copilot all generate answers by retrieving from indexed web content and synthesizing. If a news article, forum thread, or aggregator page about the case still ranks in the underlying index after the file itself comes down, the AI answer about you may continue to cite the story for months. We treat the AI layer as its own work stream. Each major chatbot has a process for reporting harmful or inaccurate content about a real person, and pushing authoritative content into the underlying citations is usually the only way to stabilize the answer over time. Our AI search reputation management practice handles exactly this problem.

A clean Google result that is undermined by a stale Perplexity citation is not actually clean.

What the Data Says

The scale of image-based abuse is worse than most people assume, and it is getting worse, not better, with the spread of generative tools.

The FBI Internet Crime Complaint Center 2025 Annual Report tracked more than seventy-five thousand sextortion submissions, with more than five thousand seven hundred cases involving minors referred to NCMEC. The Cyber Civil Rights Initiative research documents the prevalence of image-based abuse and the mental-health cost on victims, including elevated rates of depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and suicidal ideation. The WeProtect Global Threat Assessment and Internet Watch Foundation reports document the sharp rise in AI-generated CSAM since 2023.

In the corporate and executive context, the threat is also growing. Voice-clone scams targeting families and CFOs and synthetic image attacks aimed at public figures are now routinely flagged in Verizon’s annual Data Breach Investigations Report. NCII removal is no longer a personal-life-only concern. It increasingly intersects with executive crisis work, which our executive and individual crisis reputation management practice handles directly.

Mistakes We See Clients Make

A short list of the things that quietly make removal harder.

Posting about the situation on your own channels signal-boosts the file and creates new search results that themselves need to be managed later. If a public statement is necessary, it comes after the content is offline, not before.

Hiring a firm that promises to “scrub the internet.” No such product exists. Real removal is platform-by-platform, statute-by-statute, URL-by-URL. Anyone selling otherwise is selling marketing copy.

Filing the wrong form. Generic harassment reports go to a slower queue than the dedicated NCII flow, and the forty-eight-hour federal clock does not start running until the platform receives a notice in the format the Act specifies.

Filing without evidence. Trust and Safety still requires the URL list, screenshots, and proof of identity. Filing with half a record stalls the case.

Treating the AI search layer the same as the open web. The AI answer is a different system with different removal levers. It needs its own work stream.

Waiting on counsel. The civil cause of action under 15 USC 6851 and the state criminal complaint both have time-sensitive evidentiary requirements. Looping in counsel a week later is harder than looping in counsel on day one.

What We Tell Clients About Outcomes

Removal is achievable in the overwhelming majority of cases. The speed depends on which platform, which jurisdiction, and which removal channel the case fits into. Sextortion and TAKE IT DOWN Act cases move fastest because the federal forty-eight-hour platform clock is short and the FTC now has enforcement authority. DMCA removals usually clear within a week. International mirrors and bulletin-board-style hosts are the slowest, and a small number of bad-actor hosts require litigation or de-indexing rather than direct removal.

Re-upload prevention is a discipline of its own. StopNCII hashing across the Meta, TikTok, Reddit, Snap, X, OnlyFans, Pornhub partnership network, combined with TakeItDown for minors, combined with the de-indexing and suppression layer, is what holds long term.

We put outcome-based guarantees on this work where the situation supports them. We will tell you in the consult whether your case is one where a guarantee makes sense, what the realistic timeline looks like, and where the leverage actually sits.

How DCM Approaches NCII Removal

Our content removal practice handles the platform-by-platform takedown sequence, including TAKE IT DOWN Act notices, DMCA where applicable, and the legal-route demand letter when a platform stalls. Our individual privacy and personal information removal practice covers the data brokers, aggregators, and search engines that re-publish or syndicate the file. Our executive and individual crisis reputation management practice handles the wider response when the NCII is part of an active reputational attack rather than an isolated post. Our AI search reputation management practice handles the chatbot layer once the open web is cleaned up. Our suppress negative search results practice covers the cases where a host refuses removal but Google and Bing will still de-index.

We do not promise miracles. We explain exactly what is possible, file every channel that applies, and put outcome-based guarantees on the work where the situation supports them.

If a File of You Is Live Right Now

The single most useful thing you can do in the next hour is start the evidence record, run the reverse image search across the major engines, hash the file with StopNCII or TakeItDown, and file the platform forms above.

If you want a second set of eyes on the sequence, or a faster lane through the platform Trust and Safety queues, book a free consultation with our team. We will tell you what is realistic, what the timeline looks like, and where the leverage actually sits in your specific situation. There is no charge for the conversation.

The federal removal clock is finally on the victim’s side. The faster you start, the faster the file comes down.