Five things you have been told about removing leaked images that are not true
After working on thousands of NCII takedown cases since 2024, we keep running into the same five wrong things people have been told. Here is the honest version of each one.
1. "You can't get content off offshore leak sites."
False. It takes 2 to 6 weeks of sustained, parallel pressure at every infrastructure layer the site depends on, but it comes down. The site itself will ignore you, and that is by design. The CDN in front of it, the hosting provider behind it, the registrar that controls the domain, the transit network that routes its traffic, and the ad networks that pay it each have legal obligations the site itself does not.
What actually works is pressure at every one of those layers at the same time, not one email and a polite follow-up. Compliant mainstream platforms move in 24 to 48 hours when you use the right NCII reporting form. Offshore sites move when the layer underneath them moves.
Our Emergency Takedown flow is built specifically for this case. Flat one-time pricing by unique domain count, filed at every infrastructure layer in parallel, with a documented dispatch log at each one.
2. "DMCA is the only legal lever you have."
False since 2025. The TAKE IT DOWN Act became federal law and is specifically designed for non-consensual intimate imagery. It applies to all online platforms with notice-and-takedown obligations and forces a 48-hour removal window once the platform receives notice. The penalty teeth are real.
DMCA still applies when the subject owns the copyright to the content (your own OnlyFans content being pirated, your own selfies being reposted without permission). When both statutes apply, our notices cite both. But for most leaked-image cases TAKE IT DOWN is the primary statute and is stronger than DMCA, because it does not require copyright ownership and the timeline is statutory rather than discretionary.
3. "PimEyes will find everything that's out there."
False. PimEyes is geofenced out of Illinois under BIPA, so anyone running it from there gets nothing. They also do not crawl most leak sites or pirate tube hosts because those hosts block scrapers and use anti-bot challenges PimEyes does not solve. Yandex Images, FaceCheck.id, Google Lens, and TinEye each crawl different parts of the web. Running just one of them leaves content un-found.
The same logic applies to text search. Google misses content that lives only on Russian and Asian hosts. Yandex catches that. Most leak ecosystems require BOTH a text-based scan (across known leak sites, with your name and handles) AND a reverse-image scan (across faces) to map the full surface. Our free scan handles the text-based layer across the major leak ecosystems. The reverse-image layer needs you to run the tools yourself, since the scrape-blocking is real and no single service has every facial index.
4. "You need a lawyer to file takedowns."
False unless you also want to sue the perpetrator. NCII removal is administrative work, not litigation. The platforms have removal channels that do not require a lawyer's letterhead. Filing as an authorized agent under signed Letter of Authorization gets the same processing speed as a law firm, often faster, because authorized agents file dozens of notices a day and platforms recognize the volume.
A defamation attorney is the right tool when the issue is the ORIGINAL post being up (a Facebook AWDTSG post, a Discord channel, a Telegram message containing allegations). See our Minc Law comparison for when each path fits. For the downstream image spread, the takedown chain in our Emergency Takedown flow is the right tool, and lawyers tend to be slow and expensive at this layer.
5. "If Google de-indexes it, the content is gone."
False. De-indexing closes the search-discovery surface, which matters more than people realize, because most strangers find leaked content through a name search rather than by browsing the host directly. Closing search discovery cuts off the vast majority of casual discovery. But the content is still hosted. The image still serves to anyone with the URL.
Real removal happens at the host (or at the infrastructure layer above the host when the host refuses). De-index in parallel with host-level takedown, not instead of it. We file Google and Bing de-indexing on every case as a default action because it is free and works in 1 to 3 days. We never frame it as the resolution.
The honest version
Most of this is doable yourself if you have 4 to 6 weeks of evenings, can learn infrastructure escalation, and do not mind your legal name appearing on the public Lumen Database (which archives every takedown notice filed under your own name and is searchable by anyone).
If you want the same work done in parallel rather than sequentially, by someone who already knows which CDN fronts which host and which registrar responds to which template, and who files as your authorized agent so your name stays off the public record, that is what our Emergency Takedown flow exists for. Flat one-time pricing by domain count ($499 for 1 to 5 domains, $799 for 6 to 15, $1,299 for 16+), with a documented dispatch log at every infrastructure layer.
For ongoing protection against re-uploads (which are real and trickle in for months after the original leak rather than arriving all at once), our Shield subscription handles twice-weekly monitoring at $29 a month.
And if you are under 18, or the content was created before you turned 18, go to NCMEC Take It Down (takeitdown.ncmec.org) first. Free, specialized, the right tool for that case.
The takedown industry has spent years telling people the parts of the problem they cannot fix, because that is easier than building the parts they can. Most of what you have been told you cannot do is doable. It just takes the right lever at the right layer.