Your content was leaked. Here is what to do.

What a leak is, and why speed matters

A leak is your content spreading outside the setting you chose: paid content copied from a subscription platform, a course shared for free, or private images posted by someone else. On specialised forums and channels, bots copy every post to mirror sites within hours: the faster the first takedown, the fewer copies there are to chase afterwards.

The first 7 steps

1. Do not reply to accounts sharing or mocking you, and do not pay any “service” that promises guaranteed removal in 24 hours.
2. List and keep evidence for every copy:
   • the exact address (URL) of every page, post or channel;
   • a screenshot showing the content, the address and the date;
   • the name of the account or site posting it, and the date it was posted.
3. Pick the right ground. Content you created: copyright (a DMCA notice works with most platforms). Intimate image shared without consent: non-consensual intimate imagery, covered by the TAKE IT DOWN Act in the US and by criminal law in the UK and many other countries. The right reason speeds everything up.
4. Send a takedown request to every site, through its form or its copyright contact address.
5. Go to the host if the site does not answer. When the site sits behind a service like Cloudflare, its abuse form forwards the request to the real host.
6. Get the pages delisted by Google, through its legal removal process.
7. Secure and monitor: change your passwords if an account was hacked, watermark your content and search for your username regularly.

When the host never answers

Some leak sites pick hosts in uncooperative countries, sometimes called “bulletproof” hosts. Direct requests then go unanswered. Three levers remain: the infrastructure provider (content delivery network, domain registrar), search engines, which can make the pages impossible to find, and the platforms that send traffic to those sites. See the glossary.

What the law says

Your photos and videos are protected by copyright from the moment you create them, in the 180-plus countries of the Berne Convention, with no registration needed to send a takedown notice. Sharing someone's intimate images without consent is a crime in the US (TAKE IT DOWN Act), the UK and the EU countries, even if the person agreed to the picture being taken.

Reporting to the police is your right, and the only way to have the person behind it prosecuted. A lawyer can tell you whether it makes sense in your case.

General information, not legal advice. For advice on your situation, talk to a lawyer where you live.