Someone shared your private images without your consent.

Yes. The federal TAKE IT DOWN Act makes it a crime to publish intimate images of someone without consent, and it covers AI fakes and threats to publish as well. Separately, federal law gives you a civil claim for money damages.

Yes, and three Florida laws can apply. Statute 784.049 covers intimate images shared without consent. Statute 836.13 covers AI-generated and edited sexual images. Statute 836.14 covers images that were stolen, or sold for money. Each makes the conduct a crime, and each gives you a civil claim.

Florida law addresses this directly: sending a private image to someone does not, on its own, give up your reasonable expectation that it stays private. Federal law says the same thing another way: consenting to an image being taken is not consent to it being shared, and sharing it with one person is not consent to that person spreading it further.

It can still be covered. Federal law reaches images where you are identifiable by your face, your likeness, or another distinguishing feature such as a birthmark, or by information posted with the image. Florida law reaches images that contain your identifying information, or that are posted alongside it so a viewer would know it is you. Which route fits depends on the image and on what was posted with it.

It depends on which law applies. Under federal law you may recover your actual damages or $150,000, plus attorney fees and costs. Under Florida’s three statutes, the civil claim provides $10,000 or your actual damages, whichever is more, plus attorney fees and costs, and statute 784.049 also allows punitive damages. What any individual case is worth depends on facts we would need to review with you.

Not necessarily. The federal law was written with this concern in mind: the court may let you sue under a pseudonym. That is a decision for the court, not something any lawyer can promise in advance, but it is in the statute, and it is one of the strongest reasons to consider the federal claim.

These laws do not state their own deadline; it comes from Florida’s general time limits, and the clock can start when the images were first shared rather than when you found out. Do not assume you have time. Call before you make that assumption.

Not necessarily, and it is worth asking rather than assuming. A later repost can matter. Whether it helps in your situation depends on the specific facts, which is why we ask for the date of the original posting and the date of every repost you know about.

Yes. Florida statute 836.13 covers sexual images that were faked or edited to look like a real, identifiable person. Creating or promoting one without consent is a crime, and the law gives you a civil claim for $10,000 or your actual damages plus attorney fees and costs. Federal law covers it too: the TAKE IT DOWN Act expressly names images made with software, machine learning, or artificial intelligence.

No. Florida law says a disclaimer inside a faked image stating that the person did not consent, or did not do what is shown, is not a defense.

Yes. Under the federal TAKE IT DOWN Act, every covered website must have a removal process, and once a valid request is submitted it must remove the images, and known copies, within 48 hours. The request can come from you or from someone acting on your behalf. We prepare and submit those requests as part of the case, and we keep the record of when each one was sent. Florida law imposes the same 48-hour duty for AI fakes and edited images.

It does not weaken your case. Florida law treats secret recording as its own wrong: it is a crime, and Florida courts recognize a civil claim for intruding into someone’s private space, including electronically. How that applies to you depends on the facts of your case.

Yes. Selling or posting your images for money is a crime under Florida statute 836.14, and sharing them for money is treated more seriously under statute 784.049 as well. Both give you a civil claim. As a practical matter, money changing hands tends to leave the kinds of records that help identify an anonymous poster.

Often, yes. An anonymous account is a starting point, not a dead end, and identifying the person behind it is one of the first things we assess in the internet cases this firm handles. Separately, a website’s duty to remove the images does not depend on knowing who posted them; the request identifies the images, not the poster.

Under federal law, yes. Where the person is incompetent, incapacitated, or deceased, a legal guardian, an estate representative, another family member, or another person the court appoints may bring the claim for them, and the defendant may never serve in that role. Matters involving images of anyone under 18 are not handled by this firm; see the under-18 page for who to contact.

The claims are aimed at the person who shared, posted, or distributed the images, not at someone who only saw them. Who you can name, and under which law, is one of the first things we sort out.