Revenge Porn and Intimate Image Abuse Laws in the UK

Sharing, or threatening to share, an intimate photo or video of someone without their consent is a criminal offence in every part of the UK, though the exact test differs between England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. In England and Wales it is also an offence to create a sexually explicit deepfake of an adult, to ask someone else to make one, or to make or supply a nudification tool. The offences people call 'revenge porn' are now sections 66A to 66I of the Sexual Offences Act 2003 in England and Wales, with separate laws in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Revenge is not part of the test: the base sharing offence needs only that the person in the image did not consent.

What the law calls intimate image abuse

Intimate image abuse is the umbrella term for sharing, threatening to share, sending or creating sexual images of a person without their consent. The phrase 'revenge porn' is still the most searched term, but it is misleading. In England and Wales the basic offence does not need any revenge motive, and the law covers strangers, colleagues and online contacts as much as former partners.

England and Wales rebuilt these offences on 31 January 2024, when the Online Safety Act 2023 inserted sections 66A to 66D into the Sexual Offences Act 2003. The same change repealed the old offence in section 33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015 ('disclosing, or threatening to disclose, private sexual photographs and films with intent to cause distress'). Older guides that describe section 33 as the current law are out of date.

This page covers the criminal offences in depth, plus how to report and get images removed. For the wider duties on platforms, see our guide to the Online Safety Act. Abusive or threatening messages that do not involve an intimate image are covered on our malicious communications page.

Sharing or threatening to share an intimate image (England and Wales)

Section 66B creates four related offences. All of them apply to a photograph or film that 'shows, or appears to show' another person in an intimate state, which brings edited images and AI deepfakes within scope.

A few points in the wording matter in practice:

• Consent can be general or specific. The section says consent 'includes general consent covering the particular act of sharing as well as specific consent'. Agreeing to an image being taken is not the same as agreeing to it being shared.
• A threat is an offence even if the image does not exist. For the threat offence the prosecution does not have to prove that the photo or film exists, or that it is an intimate image.
• One defence for the basic offence. A person charged under subsection (1) can try to prove they had a reasonable excuse for sharing. That defence is written for the basic offence only.
• A fallback verdict. If someone is charged with the intent or gratification versions, the court can convict of the basic offence instead.

On sentence length for the basic offence: section 66B(11) sets the summary maximum at six months until section 281(5) of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 is in force, and 51 weeks after that. As at 25 October 2026, legislation.gov.uk records no commencement of section 281(5), so six months is the figure that applies today.

What counts as intimate, and what is exempt

Section 66D defines an 'intimate state'. It covers a person taking part in or present during a sexual act, doing something sexual, showing all or part of their exposed genitals, buttocks or breasts, urinating or defecating, or carrying out personal care linked to those.

'Exposed' is wider than it sounds. It includes body parts visible through wet or transparent clothing, a person in underwear only, and parts that are obscured, where the obscured area is no bigger than underwear would typically cover, including obscured 'by digital alteration'. Something 'of a kind ordinarily seen in public' is outside the definition, with an exception that keeps breastfeeding images protected.

'Sharing' means giving, showing or making the image available to another person by any means. The provider of an internet service through which an image is shared is not treated as the person sharing it, so the offence targets the individual who posts or sends the image, not the platform.

Section 66C sets out exemptions. In summary:

• an image taken in a public place where the person had no reasonable expectation of privacy and was in the intimate state voluntarily;
• an image that had already been shared publicly with the person's consent (a reasonable belief that this was so is enough);
• sharing an image of a child under 16 who lacks capacity to consent, with a healthcare professional or in connection with their medical care (basic offence only);
• images of a child of a kind ordinarily shared between family and friends (this applies to the basic offence only).

A threat is exempt only where actually sharing the image would itself have been exempt.

Cyberflashing (England and Wales)

Section 66A, also in force since 31 January 2024, makes it an offence to intentionally send or give someone a photograph or film of any person's genitals where the sender either:

• intends the recipient to see it and be caused alarm, distress or humiliation, or
• sends it for sexual gratification and is reckless about whether the recipient will be caused alarm, distress or humiliation.

Sending includes sending by any means, electronic or otherwise, showing it to someone, and leaving it for a particular person to find. Images made or altered by computer graphics that appear to be photographs count, so an AI-generated image is covered.

Two features set this offence apart. It is limited to images of genitals, and the wording contains no consent element: the test turns on the sender's intention or purpose. The maximum is 2 years on indictment. Our Online Safety Act guide covers how cyberflashing fits into platform duties.

Deepfakes: creating or requesting a fake intimate image

The sharing offences have covered deepfakes since 2024, because they reach images that only appear to show a person. Creating a fake image without sharing it was not an offence until the Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 added sections 66E to 66H to the Sexual Offences Act 2003, in force in England and Wales from 6 February 2026.

Creating (section 66E). It is an offence to intentionally create a 'purported intimate image' of another person without their consent and without a reasonable belief that they consent. A purported intimate image is one that appears to be a photograph or film of the person in an intimate state, but is not, or is not only, a real one. Edits that do not add intimate content are excluded, and there is a reasonable-excuse defence that the defendant must prove.

Requesting (section 66F). It is also an offence to intentionally ask someone to create such an image, 'either in general or specific terms', without consent or reasonable belief in consent. The offence is committed whether or not the image is ever made, and wherever in the world the person or people asked are located.

Both offences are tried only in the magistrates' court, with the same six-month summary maximum as the basic sharing offence (51 weeks once the pending change described above takes effect). Section 66H allows a charge up to 3 years after the offence, provided it is brought within 6 months of the prosecutor having enough evidence.

These offences only cover images that look like an adult. Under section 66G, an image appears to be of an adult if the impression, or the predominant impression, it conveys is that the person is 18 or over. A fake image that looks like a child is dealt with under indecent images of children law instead (see below).

Nudification apps and image generators

Since 29 June 2026, section 66I, inserted by the Crime and Policing Act 2026, makes it an offence to make or adapt a thing, or to supply or offer to supply a thing, 'for use as a generator of purported intimate images'. This targets the developers and distributors of so-called nudify tools rather than individual users.

The maximum is 3 years' imprisonment, a fine, or both, on indictment. It is a defence to show that all reasonable steps were taken to prevent the tool being used to create intimate images of a person without consent. Further defences cover crime prevention, the security services and Ofcom, and internet service providers that only transmit or temporarily cache the tool, or host it without knowing what it is and remove it promptly once they know. The commencement is set out in the Crime and Policing Act 2026 (Commencement No.1 and Saving Provision) Regulations 2026.

Offences passed but not yet in force

The Crime and Policing Act 2026 contains more intimate image offences that have been enacted but not yet commenced. As at 25 October 2026, legislation.gov.uk shows them as not yet in force, and no commencement regulations for them had been found. They include:

• taking or recording an intimate photograph or film without consent (new sections 66AB to 66AF, including copying an intimate image that was shared only temporarily);
• sharing a semen-defaced image (new section 66AA);
• applying the Sexual Offences Act's conclusive presumptions about consent to the sharing offences;
• new image deletion orders that courts can make on conviction (section 102).

Until a commencement order brings them into force, they are not offences. If you are reading this later, check the current text on legislation.gov.uk.

Maximum sentences across the UK

Any of these can also be dealt with by a fine, alone or alongside a prison term, as the statutes provide. These are maximums for the worst cases; the sentence in a given case depends on the facts. Whether a case goes to the magistrates or the Crown Court is explained in our guide to magistrates' court vs Crown Court.

Images of under-18s

If the person in the image is under 18, the intimate image sharing offences can still apply, but the indecent images of children laws can also apply, and they carry much higher maximum sentences. In Scotland the equivalent offence is section 52 of the Civic Government (Scotland) Act 1982, and in Northern Ireland Article 3 of the Protection of Children (Northern Ireland) Order 1978, each with up to 10 years on indictment. In England and Wales, the Protection of Children Act 1978 makes it an offence to take, make, distribute or show an indecent photograph or pseudo-photograph of a child, or to possess one with a view to it being distributed or shown. The maximum on indictment is 10 years. Possession on its own is a separate offence under section 160 of the Criminal Justice Act 1988.

These laws apply even when the person sharing is also under 18, including a young person who shares an image of themselves. That does not mean every case ends in prosecution. Government guidance for education settings in England explains that police can record an outcome 21 code where an incident is non-abusive and there is no evidence of exploitation, grooming, profit motive, malicious intent or persistent behaviour. The guidance quotes the code as recording that further action 'is not in the public interest', a police decision.

For removing an image of a young person, the same guidance points to the Internet Watch Foundation and Childline's Report Remove tool for images already shared online, and to NCMEC's Take It Down tool for images that have been or might be shared. Our page on the age of consent in the UK explains how the age of consent differs from the under-18 threshold used in indecent image law.

Scotland

England and Wales sections 66A to 66I do not apply in Scotland. The main Scottish offence is section 2 of the Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016, in force since 3 July 2017. It is committed where a person discloses, or threatens to disclose, a photograph or film that shows or appears to show another person in an intimate situation, and:

• intends to cause that person fear, alarm or distress, or is reckless about whether they will be caused fear, alarm or distress; and
• the image had not previously been disclosed to the public at large by, or with the consent of, the person shown.

That mental element is the key difference from England and Wales: Scotland has no stand-alone 'no consent' offence without intent or recklessness about fear, alarm or distress. The Act provides defences of consent, reasonable belief in consent, reasonable belief that disclosure was necessary to prevent or detect crime, reasonable belief that it was in the public interest, and a public-place defence. The maximum is 12 months on summary conviction or 5 years on indictment. Because the wording includes images that 'appear to show' a person, sharing a deepfake is covered.

Unwanted sexual images are dealt with by section 6 of the Sexual Offences (Scotland) Act 2009, coercing a person into looking at a sexual image. It applies where someone, without the other person's consent or a reasonable belief in consent, causes them to look at a sexual image for sexual gratification or to humiliate, distress or alarm them. The maximum is 12 months on summary conviction or 10 years on indictment.

Scotland has no offence of creating a deepfake intimate image. The Scottish Government consulted on new laws to criminalise making a deepfake and asking someone to make one; that consultation closed on 31 August 2026, and no bill had followed at the time of writing.

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland's disclosure offence is section 51 of the Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 2016. It applies where a person discloses, or threatens to disclose, a private sexual photograph or film in which another person appears, intends by doing so to cause that person distress, and the disclosure is or would be made without their consent. The threat limb was added from 27 November 2023, and for a threat the prosecution does not need to prove the image exists.

Unlike the England and Wales and Scottish offences, section 51 does not cover an image that is private or sexual only because it has been altered or combined with another image, or that shows the person only because of such an alteration, such as a face added to someone else's sexual image (section 53), so sharing a sexual deepfake made from an ordinary photo is not caught by it. Intent to cause distress has to be proved; the Act says a person is not taken to have intended distress merely because it was a natural and probable consequence. The maximum is 2 years on indictment or 6 months on summary conviction. Defences cover crime prevention, journalism in the public interest, and images previously disclosed for reward.

Cyberflashing in Northern Ireland is Article 72A of the Sexual Offences (Northern Ireland) Order 2008, in operation since 27 November 2023. Unlike the England and Wales version, it requires that the recipient did not consent and the sender did not reasonably believe they did, and it covers images of sexual activity as well as genitals. The maximum is 2 years on indictment.

The Department of Justice consulted from 21 July to 13 October 2025 (the closing date was extended) on criminalising sexually explicit deepfakes of adults, and in 2026 the Minister proposed an amendment to the Criminal Justice (Sentencing etc) Bill to criminalise creating and sharing sexually explicit deepfakes without consent. That Bill had not become law when we checked on 25 October 2026, so Northern Ireland has no deepfake creation offence yet; check the Northern Ireland Assembly's bill page for its current stage.

Getting images taken down

Free support first. The Revenge Porn Helpline provides support and advice for cases of intimate image abuse, and government guidance describes its service as free and confidential. It can help alongside, or before, the routes below.

Platforms now have a legal deadline. Since 29 June 2026, regulated user-to-user services must operate systems to take down content that is the subject of an 'intimate image content report', together with copies that are the same or substantially the same, as soon as reasonably practicable and no later than 48 hours after receiving the report. The duty was inserted into section 10 of the Online Safety Act 2023 by the Crime and Policing Act 2026. Search services have an equivalent duty.

A valid report has to come from the person shown in the image, or someone acting on their behalf. It must declare that, be made in good faith, identify the content and give contact details. The duty covers content amounting to an offence under section 66B(1), (2) or (3), and a platform can decline if it considers the content is not intimate image content or the reporter is not the subject or acting for them. Sharing, cyberflashing and deepfake offences are also listed as priority offences under the Online Safety Act; our Online Safety Act guide explains what that status means for platforms.

Police reporting service. In February 2026 police in England and Wales launched a dedicated online reporting service for intimate image abuse. The National Police Chiefs' Council says it offers help with getting content removed from platforms, preventing future uploads and preserving digital evidence, alongside emotional support from the Revenge Porn Helpline. The service is reached through the police.uk advice pages.

If an image has been posted in search results or on a site, the right to be forgotten under UK data protection law may give a further route to erasure.

Reporting to the police and anonymity

You can report to the police in the usual way or through the online service above. Keeping a record of where the image appeared, when, and any messages or threats can help, and the NPCC service is designed to preserve that evidence.

In England and Wales, a person who reports an offence under Part 1 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, which includes sections 66A to 66F, has lifelong anonymity under the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992. Nothing likely to identify them as the complainant can be published during their lifetime. In Northern Ireland the same Act lists the Article 72A cyberflashing offence. The 1992 Act does not list the Scottish offences. Scotland has passed its own lifelong anonymity rule for victims of listed offences, including the section 2 disclosure offence, in section 104 of the Victims, Witnesses, and Justice Reform (Scotland) Act 2025, but that section was not yet in force as at 25 October 2026.

Civil options

Alongside a criminal complaint, a civil claim may be possible. Under section 3 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997, which applies in England and Wales, a victim of harassment can claim damages for anxiety and financial loss and ask the court for an injunction. Harassment needs a course of conduct (conduct on at least two occasions), so a single share may not be enough on its own; repeated sharing or threats can be.

If you are accused

Anyone questioned about one of these offences is entitled to free legal advice at the police station from a duty solicitor, whatever their income. Our guides on being arrested and the right to remain silent explain the process, and criminal legal aid may cover representation in court. A conviction will appear on a criminal record check until it becomes spent. More offences are covered in our UK criminal law hub.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is revenge porn illegal in the UK?

Yes. Sharing an intimate image of someone without their consent is a crime in England and Wales (Sexual Offences Act 2003 s.66B), Scotland (Abusive Behaviour and Sexual Harm (Scotland) Act 2016 s.2) and Northern Ireland (Justice Act (Northern Ireland) 2016 s.51). In England and Wales no revenge motive is needed for the basic offence.

What is the sentence for sharing intimate images without consent in England and Wales?

The basic offence is tried in the magistrates' court only, with a maximum of six months under the current wording (51 weeks once a pending change takes effect), a fine, or both. Sharing to cause alarm, distress or humiliation, sharing for sexual gratification, and threatening to share each carry up to 2 years on indictment.

Is threatening to share a nude photo a crime even if it is never posted?

Yes. In England and Wales, threatening to share an intimate image is an offence if the person intends the victim, or someone who knows them, to fear the threat will be carried out, or is reckless about that. The prosecution does not have to prove the image exists. Scotland and Northern Ireland also criminalise threats to disclose.

Is it illegal to make a deepfake nude of someone?

In England and Wales, yes, since 6 February 2026: creating a fake intimate image of an adult without consent, or asking someone to make one, is an offence under sections 66E and 66F of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, with a maximum of six months. Sharing a deepfake was already covered in England and Wales and Scotland, but not by Northern Ireland's disclosure offence. Scotland has no creation offence yet, and Northern Ireland consulted in 2025 on one.

Are nudify apps illegal in the UK?

In England and Wales, making, adapting, supplying or offering to supply a tool for generating fake intimate images has been an offence since 29 June 2026 under section 66I of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, with up to 3 years on indictment. The offence targets those who make or distribute the tools; using one to create an intimate image of a real adult without consent is covered by the creation offence.

What is cyberflashing and what is the penalty?

Cyberflashing is sending someone an image of genitals intending to cause alarm, distress or humiliation, or for sexual gratification while reckless about that. In England and Wales it is section 66A of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, with up to 2 years on indictment. Northern Ireland's Article 72A also carries 2 years and requires lack of consent.

How quickly must a website remove my intimate image?

Since 29 June 2026, regulated platforms must take down content reported in a valid intimate image content report, and copies of it, as soon as reasonably practicable and within 48 hours. The report must come from the person shown or someone acting for them.

What if the person in the image is under 18?

Images of under-18s can be covered by indecent images of children law as well as the intimate image offences. That law includes the Protection of Children Act 1978 in England and Wales, which carries up to 10 years on indictment. Scotland and Northern Ireland have equivalent laws with the same maximum. Police can record an outcome 21 code for non-abusive sharing between young people. The Internet Watch Foundation and Childline's Report Remove tool helps remove images of young people.

Will my name be published if I report intimate image abuse?

In England and Wales, complainants of offences under Part 1 of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, including the intimate image offences, have lifelong anonymity under the Sexual Offences (Amendment) Act 1992, so nothing likely to identify them as the complainant may be published.