Start with your safety
If you believe you're in immediate danger, contact local emergency services. A platform report or reputation service is not an emergency response. PEN America's guidance on assessing threats can help you consider whether the behavior is becoming more specific, frequent, or threatening.
Tell someone you trust what is happening. You may want help watching the situation, preserving evidence, or simply getting some distance from your notifications.
Keep a record before you report
Save the URL, account handle, date, and screenshots of the relevant content. Include enough of the surrounding exchange to show what happened. Keep the record somewhere private, especially if it contains exposed personal information.
For repeated incidents, a simple timeline helps: what appeared, where it appeared, what you reported, and the response. PEN America's documentation guide explains why this matters and suggests asking someone trusted to help when reviewing the material is draining.
You can keep evidence without reposting the abuse to your audience. Sharing a screenshot publicly can also expose information you are trying to protect.
Report the specific behavior
Negative opinions and harassment are not interchangeable. A post being unfair or upsetting does not automatically mean a platform will remove it. Identify the behavior and use the reporting category that fits.
Impersonation
Someone copying your identity to mislead people is a different problem from someone criticizing you. Save the account link and use the platform's impersonation process. TikTok, for example, provides a specific reporting route.
Threats, doxxing, and coordinated abuse
Report the relevant posts and accounts with their context. Platform rules vary. YouTube's harassment policy explicitly addresses threats, exposed private information, and directing coordinated abuse at someone. That does not mean every disagreement or hostile comment qualifies for removal.
Keep a copy of your report and any response so you can track what has already been tried.
Separate removal from search visibility
There are several possible outcomes. A platform or publisher may remove the original content. A search engine may remove a result while the original page remains online. Suppression aims to move a result lower for a particular search.
Google makes this distinction in its personal-information removal guidance. Removing a Google result does not erase the source or remove it from every other platform.
If you want help addressing a particular URL, our removal and suppression service explains the work and the agreed outcome. Be clear about whether you need the source addressed, search visibility reduced, or both.
Decide what you need to keep watching
You may need to know whether your address appears somewhere new, whether an impersonation account returns, or whether a thread starts spreading. You probably do not need to read every unpleasant mention yourself.
Decide which names, keywords, and platforms matter. A trusted person can help review them, or you can use a monitoring service with a defined scope. Ours checks daily, with daily or weekly summaries and optional critical alerts when concerning material is detected. Daily monitoring does not mean every new post is detected immediately.
Get help with the work you need
One harmful URL and an ongoing harassment campaign are different engagements. If threats, doxxing, impersonation, or coordinated abuse are continuing across platforms, tell us what is happening. We assess counter-harassment work case by case and provide a quote.
You can also explore our reputation services for creators if you need help promoting your work, addressing a specific post, or keeping track of what people find about you.