Leaked cam content: a step-by-step plan to get it taken down

If your shows or clips have turned up on sites you never agreed to, you can do a lot about it yourself, for free, starting today. This is the order that gets the most done, fastest.

One honest note before you start: you probably won't get every copy, and some will come back. The goal is to get the big sites to remove them and to make sure someone searching your stage name doesn't find them. That part is very doable.

Step 1: Make a list

Open a spreadsheet with five columns: link, site, date found, what you sent, and the result. Search your stage name on Google, with and without words like "video" or "leaked", and add every copy you find. Take a screenshot of each page showing the address and the date, in case it changes later.

This list is the whole job. Every form below asks for the links, and it shows you what's working.

Step 2: Ask Google to drop the links

Do this first, because it makes the biggest difference. Even when a site refuses to remove a video, Google can stop showing it in search results, so people looking for you stop finding it.

Use Google's copyright removal form for Web Search. It asks you to describe your original work, show where you published it, and paste the links to the copies. Google's transparency report says requests sent through its web form take about 6 hours to process on average.

Worried about your name? On the form itself, Google says it generally doesn't share personal data from these requests, including the name of the person making them, with Lumen, the public database of takedown requests. The exception is a case-by-case "overriding public interest", and Google says it will tell you if that happens.

Google also has a separate policy for intimate images. By Google's own description, it covers content you didn't consent to, or did consent to but that isn't published commercially. For recordings of paid shows or clips you sold, the copyright form above is usually the one that fits.

Step 3: Send a takedown notice to each site

Look for a link marked DMCA, copyright or "report content", usually in the site's footer. If there isn't one, search the site's name in the US Copyright Office's DMCA agent directory, where sites register the address that receives these notices.

US law lists what a notice has to contain, and the template below covers all of it. Copy it, fill in the brackets and send it:

Subject: DMCA takedown notice

I am the copyright owner of the content described below, which I published at [where you published it, for example your profile or clip store].

These pages host copies without my permission: [link 1], [link 2], [link 3]. Please remove them or disable access to them.

I have a good faith belief that this use is not authorised by the copyright owner, its agent or the law.

The information in this notice is accurate, and under penalty of perjury, I am the owner of the copyright that is being infringed, or authorised to act for the owner.

Contact: [name or business name], [address], [email], [phone]. Signed: [name]

The law asks for enough contact details for the site to reach you. If you don't want to give your home address, use a business or mailbox address, or let a takedown service send notices for you.

Step 4: If a site ignores you, go over its head

If a site ignores you, the company it registered its domain with may act instead. Put the site's domain into ICANN Lookup, which shows the domain's registrar and, usually, an abuse contact. Send the same notice there, with a line saying the site didn't respond.

Step 5: If the copies are on a cam site

Use the site's own reporting. On GirlCamHub, the DMCA / Remove Content link at the bottom of every page opens a removal form on Chaturbate's support site. Who to contact for what lists the site's other help and reporting links.

Should you pay a takedown service?

If you broadcast on Chaturbate or GirlCamHub, try Chaturbate's own takedown help first. It's free: you send support the direct links to your content, and they help you send the notices.

If new copies keep appearing every week, a service can save you hours. They search for copies and send notices as your agent, which also keeps your own details off them. Some are good and some charge a lot for very little, so before you pay, ask:

Walk away from any service that promises to remove everything forever, wants a big fee upfront for "permanent" removal, or asks for your account passwords or the files themselves. Nobody can promise the first, and none of them need the other two.

Keeping the next leak smaller

• Put your stage name or a small watermark on clips you sell, so copies point back to you.
• Keep your stage name, email and payment details separate from your real ones. Camming anonymously on Chaturbate covers region blocking and the other settings that help.
• Set up a Google Alert for your stage name, so new copies show up early.
• Keep your originals with their dates. They make every notice quicker to write.

If you're new to broadcasting, how to become a Chaturbate model covers the settings worth changing before your first show, including the one that records your private shows.

If someone uses it against you

If anyone threatens to share content unless you pay, or contacts people you know, that's extortion, not a copyright problem. Don't pay and don't argue. Save everything and report it. Our guide to cam scams and sextortion walks through the steps.

This guide isn't legal advice. If a site threatens you back or the leak is part of something bigger, a lawyer can do more than any form. And for what it's worth: someone else copying your work is their wrongdoing, not yours.