Online impersonation: is it illegal and can you sue?

By Yair Cohen, Solicitor specialising in internet law. Updated 6 October 2026.

This guide is part of our catfishing and impersonation section.

Having won some of the most high-profile catfishing and impersonation cases in Britain, from Kirat Assi's Sweet Bobby case to Sasha Davies's four-year impersonation case, I can tell you this: if someone has set up a fake profile pretending to be you, on social media, a dating app or an adult site, you are not powerless, and you are not alone. I know how it feels to find your own face on a profile you never made. You wonder who has seen it, what has been said in your name, and who would do this to you. There is no single offence called "impersonation", which is why so many people are told nothing can be done. But impersonators almost always break other laws on the way: harassment, privacy, data protection, defamation and sometimes fraud. In most cases a letter from us gets the profile taken down and stops it, and quickly. Court is the fallback. Once the profile is gone, your name is yours again.

Is online impersonation a crime?

It can be, depending on what the impersonator does with your identity. Pretending to be someone online is not itself a crime, but what impersonators do with a fake profile usually is, and if someone has told you nothing can be done, please read on.

The most common offence is harassment, and a fake profile can also be stalking, which the law treats more seriously: the stalking offence in the Protection from Harassment Act 1997 lists "publishing any statement or other material purporting to originate from a person" as one of the behaviours it has in mind, which is a fair description of a profile in your name. Where the identity is used to get money, or to cause someone a loss, that is fraud under section 2 of the Fraud Act 2006. And a newer offence, in force from the end of January 2024, catches anyone who sends a message they know is false meaning it to do someone real harm, under section 179 of the Online Safety Act 2023.

Where the profile uses intimate images of you, real or faked, the law is stricter still, and our guide to deepfake and fake intimate images sets out the offences and what to do. One warning about older advice: you may have read that harassment and the Malicious Communications Act are the only criminal laws that apply. That is out of date. The 1988 Act now covers only indecent or grossly offensive messages, its threat and false-message limbs having been repealed in January 2024 when the newer offences came in.

Can you sue someone for impersonating you?

Yes, and in our experience the civil route is usually the faster way to make it stop, because you decide when to act instead of waiting for the police. Harassment lets you claim damages and ask for an injunction under section 3 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. Lifting your photos, your phone number or your address onto a fake profile misuses your private information and breaches your data protection rights, which also let you have the details erased from any site holding them. Where the profile says untrue and damaging things about you, that is defamation, and where it costs your business money, the business can claim too.

What all this adds up to in practice is simple. Most of our clients want the profile gone and the person stopped, and that is what the first letter achieves in most cases. Some also want compensation, including for days they could not work, and an apology, and the letter asks for those where you want them. Above all, you can get signed promises not to do it again, given to the court, so that breaking them can lead to prison. That is what lets you stop searching for new profiles late at night.

What to do in the first 24 hours

Save the evidence, tell the people who need to know, and do not confront the impersonator. Screenshot the fake profile, the username, the web address and any messages, with the date showing, and if friends spotted it first, ask for their screenshots too. Report the profile through the platform's impersonation form and keep the reference number. If the profile gives out your address or invites people to contact you, tell the police straight away, and call 999 if you feel in danger. If calls are reaching your workplace, a short, factual word with your employer gets ahead of the story.

Please do not message the account, and do not announce your suspicions publicly: that is when accounts vanish and evidence goes with them. And please do not blame yourself. Feeling embarrassed is natural, but you have done nothing wrong. Clients, friends, colleagues and companies all hold some of your details, and you cannot control what one of them decides to do.

Getting a fake profile taken down

Platforms do remove impersonation accounts, but on their own terms and sometimes slowly. When you report it yourself they ask you to prove who you are, the emails go back and forth for days or weeks, and in our experience closing an account can take three or four weeks, while copies spread to other sites. A letter from us that spells out which laws the profile breaks, and reminds the platform of its own duty under the Online Safety Act 2023 to act swiftly on illegal content, usually changes the pace. We ask Google at the same time to drop the pages from its results, so the profile stops appearing when someone searches for you.

There is one risk to watch. In a case of ours, the platform copied its emails about the takedown to the person behind the account as well as to our client, and the impersonator opened a second fake account in reply. That is one reason we think about identifying the person before, or alongside, asking for removal.

Finding out who is behind it

In most cases we can find out, and it usually turns out to be someone the victim already knows. People picture a distant stranger. In the cases we see it is more likely to be a former friend, a colleague, a neighbour or someone close to the family. That can be hard to hear, but it also means the person is within reach, and you can stop suspecting everyone around you.

Our own investigators work from the traces the person has left, as our guide to tracing anonymous internet users describes, and where the platform holds the answer, a Norwich Pharmacal order from the court makes it hand the details over. Once named, many impersonators agree to stop at once, because being named is the thing they were hiding from. From then on they deal with us, not with you.

There is no crime called impersonation, but most of what an impersonator does with your identity is against the law.

When the fake profile is on a dating or adult site

These cases are more urgent, because a profile offering dates or sex in your name can bring strangers to your home or your workplace. If this is happening to you, you may be afraid to answer your phone or open your front door, and that fear is a reason to act today. We have seen a victim's name and work number put on adult and dating sites so that her office was flooded with calls, and a profile tagged with your name can start to rank when people search for you. So we act on the source sites and on Google together.

Where intimate images are involved, real or fake, platforms serving UK users now have 48 hours from a proper report to take them down, and our guide to getting intimate content removed covers that route. Many of these sites are based in North America, and where that matters we call on the US internet lawyers in our network, as our porn lawyers page describes.

People we have helped

We have changed names and some details in these stories to protect our clients' privacy, except where the case ended in public at the High Court.

A woman was approached outside her home by a man she had never seen before. He said he had come to have sex with her, as he believed had been arranged. She grabbed the piece of paper he was holding and screamed for help, and he fled. The paper had her name, her address and the name of a social media account on it, and anyone who saw that account could find her home. The police traced the man through the account and released him, because he had been deceived too. She asked the platform to close the account in her name, and came to us in great distress with a suspicion about who was behind it. We obtained a disclosure order requiring the platform to tell us who had set up the account, and it confirmed her suspicion: someone from her past she had fallen out with, who had created the profile to get revenge. We then had the account and the images removed. She finally knew who had done it, and the account that had led a stranger to her door was gone.

Another client, Ela, found out about her fake profile when her husband's friends told him they had seen her on dating apps, listed as single. The photos had been taken from her private Instagram account, the profile gave out her mobile number, and it described her in insulting, untrue terms. Whoever was behind it seemed to know private things about her, which put a strain on her marriage. She wanted the profile gone, and she wanted to know who had done it. With the co-operation of the dating app's operator we had the profile removed permanently, then used the information the operator gave us to identify the man behind it and confront him. He agreed straight away to stop and to pay her damages. The profile was gone for good, and she had the answer she had been looking for.

The two cases I mentioned at the top are told in full on their own pages: the Sasha Davies catfishing case, where the woman behind four years of fake profiles apologised in open court and paid compensation after our investigators identified her, and the Sweet Bobby catfishing case, a civil claim for a woman deceived for nearly a decade by someone she knew well using the identities of real people. More of our work is in our catfishing and impersonation cases.

Frequently asked questions

Is it illegal to make a fake account in my name?

Not in itself, but what is done with the account nearly always is: harassment, stalking, fraud or the false communications offence, depending on the facts, and each also gives you a claim for damages.

The platform will not remove the fake profile. What now?

Our letter, setting out the offences involved and what the Online Safety Act expects of the platform, gets a different answer from the same help desk, and we chase it until the profile is gone.

Can I find out who it is without knowing their name?

Usually, yes. Our investigators start from what the person has left behind online, and where the platform is the only one that knows, the court can order it to tell us.

Will going to court make it public?

Rarely. Most impersonation cases settle on a letter and a private agreement. Where court is unavoidable, we ask for your identity to be kept out of the public record where that is needed to protect you.

Can I claim if the fake profile hurts my business?

Yes. Lost business caused by harassment is recoverable, and a false statement likely to cost you money in your trade can be malicious falsehood or defamation, both of which carry damages.

Should I tell my employer?

If anything is reaching your workplace, yes: a brief, factual explanation before someone else tells the story is better, and it lets your employer keep a record of any calls, which is evidence.