What to do when someone is impersonating you online

The first hour

The instinct is to get the account taken down as fast as possible. Do that, but capture it first, because once it is gone the evidence goes with it.

1. Capture everything before reporting. Screenshot the profile, every post and every message, with the address bar and the date visible. Save the profile’s web address and any user identifier the platform shows. Note when you first saw it and who told you about it. Our harassment page explains how to keep a record in a form that stands up later.
2. Report the account to the platform. Every major platform has a specific impersonation report, separate from the general report button, and it moves faster when you use it. You will usually be asked to prove who you are.
3. Warn the people who might be contacted. A short message to friends, colleagues or clients saying that an account in your name is fake, and that you will not be asking them for money or personal details, takes the sting out of most impersonation.
4. Secure your own accounts. Impersonation sometimes follows a compromise. Change passwords, switch on two-factor authentication and check which devices are signed in.
5. Do not contact the account. Engaging tells the person it is working, and anything you say can be turned around.

What the platforms will and will not do

Platforms remove clear impersonation of a named individual, and they will usually do it within days if the report is well made. They are slower on parody and commentary accounts, on accounts using your photographs under another name, and on anything that involves a judgement about whether the content is actually about you.

What they will not do is tell you who set the account up. That information is disclosed only to the police or under a court order, which is why identifying the person is a separate exercise from removing the account.

The Online Safety Act 2023 places duties on platforms to deal with illegal content and gives the regulator powers over them, but it does not give you a direct right to a takedown. It has strengthened the response to the offences below.

The offences involved

Impersonation itself is not a single offence in England and Wales, but the things done through a fake account usually are.

• Messages meant to cause distress sent from the account are an offence under the Malicious Communications Act 1988, and a course of conduct is harassment.
• Obtaining money or goods by pretending to be you is fraud under the Fraud Act 2006, and if your contacts have been asked for money the police should be told.
• Accessing your real account to set the fake one up, or to take your photographs and contacts, is an offence under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.
• Intimate images posted on a fake account are covered separately; our intimate image abuse guide sets out the specific route.
• Statements that damage your reputation may be defamatory, which is a civil matter and one for a solicitor.

Report to the police on 101 with your screenshots. Ask for a crime reference number; the platforms respond faster to a report that carries one, and some will only release account details to the police once a crime is recorded.

Finding out who is behind it

Most people who come to us with impersonation already have a suspicion. What they lack is evidence that would let them act on it, and confronting the wrong person makes everything worse.

Identifying the person behind an account is attribution work. It is done from what is publicly visible: when the account was created and what it did first, which photographs were used and where they were taken from, who it followed and who followed it back before anyone noticed, writing habits, timing, and the connections between this account and others. A fake account is very rarely as clean as its creator thinks it is.

The output is a report that says who we believe is responsible, how confident we are and why, with every step recorded. It is written so that a solicitor can put it to the person, the police can act on it, or a court can be asked to order the platform to confirm it. Where the person cannot be identified from public material, we say so, and the report sets out what a court order would need to ask for.

Court orders to identify someone

Where a platform holds the answer, a solicitor can apply to the court for an order requiring it to disclose the account holder’s details. These orders are granted where there is a good arguable case of wrongdoing and no other way to find out, and the evidence gathered before the application is what shows both. An attribution report shortens the argument.

The order is worth pursuing when the harm is serious and continuing, and when there is something you intend to do with the name, such as a civil claim or a report the police will act on. For a single fake account that is removed within a week, it rarely is.

When an investigator is the wrong route

If the account has been removed, nothing was obtained and nobody was harmed, the sensible course is to keep the screenshots in case it recurs and leave it there. If you already know who it is and the police have accepted the report, the police are better placed than we are. If the account is a parody or a critic rather than an impersonator, the remedy is a solicitor’s letter or nothing at all, and investigation would be disproportionate.

We say which of these applies in the first conversation, and there is no charge for it.

This guide is general information about the law of England and Wales as we understand it at the date shown at the foot of the page. It is not legal advice and does not take account of your circumstances. Before acting on anything here, particularly where court proceedings, a criminal complaint or an employment decision are involved, take advice from a solicitor. We are investigators, not lawyers, and we will say so if a question you bring us needs one.

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