What to do when someone is impersonating you online

The first hour

Preserve readily available evidence if safe, and report the account promptly. Removal may make public material harder to retrieve, but do not delay urgent help to collect it.

1. Save useful evidence if safe. Record the profile URL, user identifier, relevant posts or messages, and when you captured them. Preserve originals where available. Do not download or redistribute suspected illegal images; use the reporting routes appropriate to the content.
2. Report the account to the platform. Use its impersonation or account-abuse route and retain the reference. Follow the platform’s identity-verification instructions through its official site or app; reporting routes and response times vary.
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 assess reports against their own rules. Removal is not guaranteed, and parody, commentary, compromised accounts, and copied photographs may be handled differently. Keep a record of reports and use any available appeal route.

A platform will not normally disclose another user’s private account information to a complainant simply on request. Disclosure to authorities or through legal proceedings depends on the law, jurisdiction, and information retained.

The Online Safety Act 2023 creates duties for regulated services and enforcement powers for Ofcom. It does not promise an individual a particular removal result or response time.

The offences involved

The use of a fake identity is not automatically a criminal offence in England and Wales. Depending on intent, content, and the surrounding conduct, it may involve:

• Threatening, false, or otherwise unlawful communications. Different offences have different thresholds; distress alone does not establish one. The CPS communications guidance covers current offences, including provisions of the Online Safety Act 2023. Repeated conduct may also amount to 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 threats, stalking, or other suspected crime to police, using 999 for an emergency and 101 or online reporting otherwise. If money was lost, contact the bank promptly and use the relevant fraud-reporting route. Keep any reference number, but do not assume it guarantees removal or disclosure by a platform.

Finding out who is behind it

Attribution starts with what can be verified from lawful sources: account history, reused identifiers, links between profiles, and contextual information. Similar writing style or timing may suggest a lead but cannot establish identity by itself. Consider impersonation of a suspect, shared accounts, and coincidence as alternatives.

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 report distinguishes observed facts from assessments about responsibility, records confidence and limitations, and explains unresolved alternatives. Some accounts cannot be attributed from public information. A solicitor can assess whether further legal steps are justified.

Court orders to identify someone

A solicitor may be able to seek a disclosure order where the legal requirements are met. Jurisdiction, necessity, proportionality, costs, and the information a platform holds all matter. A report can support an application, but cannot guarantee an order or a useful response.

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 is removed and the harm has stopped, retaining records and monitoring for recurrence may be enough. Serious threats, continuing harassment, or financial loss may need police or legal advice. Criticism or parody is not itself grounds for investigation; assess the actual conduct and harm.

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

This is general guidance within the scope identified above. It is not legal advice and does not take account of your circumstances. Before a legal, employment, or court-related decision, seek advice from a solicitor in the relevant jurisdiction. Harwick provides investigative services; legal advice is a separate professional service.

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