What to do if…
online harassment or a hostile social-media surge makes you fear in-person targeting

What to do now

1. Reach a safer pause. Go inside a locked, occupied, or staffed place. If you are at home, secure accessible doors and windows and do not open the door to unexpected callers. Call 999 if anyone is nearby and threatening you, trying to enter, following you, or creating an immediate danger.

2. Tell one trusted person. Give them your location and explain the specific behaviour that raised concern, such as a threat naming a time or place, publication of your address, claims that someone is travelling towards you, or an unexpected person appearing nearby. Ask them to stay with you, remain on the phone, or contact building or workplace security.

3. Save the clearest safety-related material. Capture threats, posts sharing your location, photographs of your home or workplace, named times or places, repeated unwanted contact, or claims that someone is monitoring you. Preserve visible account details, dates, times, and URLs where possible. Do not put yourself at risk or delay reporting to gather more.

4. Reduce live exposure quietly. Pause real-time posting, turn off unnecessary location sharing, review who can see your posts, and ask friends not to tag your current location. After preserving important material, mute, restrict, or block accounts where doing so feels safe.

5. Check whether an account has been compromised. Look for unfamiliar logins, changed recovery details, password-reset messages, linked devices you do not recognise, or posts you did not make. Using a device you believe is safe, follow the provider’s recovery process, secure the connected email account, change compromised or reused passwords, log out other sessions, and enable 2-step verification.

6. Report specific conduct to the police. For a non-emergency, call 101 or use the reporting route linked from GOV.UK. Describe exactly what happened, including any threats, exposed personal information, named locations, attempts to approach you, monitoring claims, or repeated unwanted contact. You can report without first preparing a complete chronology or evidence file.

7. Report the content to the platform. Use the reporting category closest to threats, harassment, impersonation, privacy violations, or disclosure of personal information. Save relevant material first where possible. Report Harmful Content provides platform-reporting guidance. Its review and escalation route generally requires you to have reported the content to the platform at least 48 hours earlier and only covers supported platforms and types of harm; its review capacity is currently reduced and cases are prioritised.

8. Contact specialist support for repeated or fixated behaviour. The National Stalking Helpline can provide practical advice and support if the conduct involves persistent unwanted contact, monitoring, threats, or attempts to approach you. You do not need to decide for yourself whether the behaviour legally counts as stalking before seeking support.