If he’s threatening to share my nude photos, is that actually illegal? Yes. The threat itself is already a crime under UK law, you do not have to wait until anything is actually shared to take it seriously or to report it.
The law changed recently, and it’s stronger than it used to be
Until 31 January 2024, this was covered by an older law, section 33 of the Criminal Justice and Courts Act 2015, which only applied once an image had actually been disclosed, and required proving the person intended to cause distress. That law has now been repealed.
Since 31 January 2024, this is covered by section 66B of the Sexual Offences Act 2003, inserted by the Online Safety Act 2023. The new offence covers both sharing an intimate image without consent and threatening to share one, whether or not anything has actually been sent anywhere. A separate offence, section 66A, covers cyberflashing, someone sending you an unsolicited nude image.
Crucially, the new law also explicitly covers deepfakes, images or videos that have been digitally altered or fabricated to appear to be you. That gap didn’t exist in the old law, and it does now.
This isn’t a small or rare problem. Government figures cited in Parliament in October 2024 show one in 14 adults in England and Wales has experienced a threat to share intimate images, rising to one in seven young women aged 18 to 34.
What this means practically
- You do not need to have already sent the photos anywhere, or lost control of them, for this to be a crime. A credible threat is enough on its own.
- It applies whether the images are real or a deepfake.
- It applies regardless of how the images originally came to exist, whether you sent them yourself in the relationship, or they were taken without your knowledge.
What to do if this is happening to you
Keep evidence. Screenshot the threat itself, the messages around it, and anything that shows who sent it and when. Don’t delete anything, even if it’s distressing to look at, it’s evidence.
Report it. This is a police matter, not something you need to resolve privately or negotiate your way out of.
If images have already been shared, or you’re worried they will be, getting them removed from a specific platform is a separate, practical step from the criminal report, and the two can happen alongside each other.
You are not the one who did something wrong here. The law is built around that principle now, clearly and specifically.
For the wider picture on protecting yourself, documenting what’s happening, and the legal routes available to you more broadly, our guides walk through this in more detail.