If someone threatens to send your intimate photos or videos to your family, friends, or school unless you pay, the RCMP’s advice is direct: don’t panic, don’t pay, and don’t send anything more. This is extortion under the Criminal Code, a completed crime the moment the threat is made, whether or not anything is ever actually leaked. Save every message as evidence, then block them completely, and report it to your local police.
Why paying is the trap, not the solution
Per the RCMP’s guidance on sextortion, the advice to victims, regardless of age, is not to pay any ransom and not to send anything further. Paying doesn’t end the situation; it confirms to the scammer that you’re both willing and able to pay, which gives them every reason to keep demanding more rather than stop. Per the RCMP’s public awareness campaign on sextortion, these operations typically run on volume across large numbers of victims; someone who pays becomes a repeat target, not a resolved case.
This is a real crime in Canada, even if nothing is ever leaked
Under Criminal Code section 346, extortion is committed by anyone who, without reasonable justification, uses threats to induce or attempt to induce a person to do something, to obtain anything. The threat itself completes the offence; the images don’t actually need to be distributed for this to already be a crime. If images are actually shared without consent, that’s a separate offence under Criminal Code section 162.1, non-consensual distribution of intimate images, punishable by up to five years. You are the victim in this situation, not someone at legal risk, regardless of how the images were originally taken or shared.
Before you block, save everything
Screenshot the full conversation, the threat itself, any images or screenshots the person showed you of your contacts, their username or profile, and any payment demands, before you cut contact. This becomes the evidence a police report and any platform report will be built on. Once you’ve saved what you need, block them completely, and don’t engage further, arguing, threatening back, or negotiating tends to provoke retaliation rather than resolve anything.
Report to the right place based on your age
If you’re under 18, Cybertip.ca, Canada’s national tipline, is built specifically to handle reports like this and can help. If you’re an adult, which covers most international students and workers, Cybertip.ca’s core mandate is focused on victims under 18, so your direct path is reporting to your local police service; the crime, extortion, applies at any age, and police can act on it regardless of whether you’re a minor.
Separately from a police report, and regardless of your age, StopNCII.org lets you get ahead of any actual image distribution. It creates a digital fingerprint, called a hash, of an intimate image directly on your own device, without ever uploading the actual image anywhere, and shares only that fingerprint with participating platforms, which can then block matching uploads on their own systems.
What to actually do
- Stop responding and don’t negotiate; don’t threaten back either, since that can provoke retaliation.
- Screenshot the entire conversation, the threat, any proof they showed of your contacts, and the payment demand, before you disengage.
- Block them completely across every platform they’ve used to reach you or your contacts.
- Report to your local police; extortion is a real crime regardless of whether anything is eventually shared.
- Use StopNCII.org to proactively protect any intimate images at risk of being shared.
- If you’re under 18, also report directly to Cybertip.ca.