These videos spread quickly and rampantly, but even if they've been online for years, the situation isn't hopeless. While much of the technology and methods big porn websites use to moderate non-consensual porn aren't sufficient, there are steps you can take to get videos removed from these sites.

If you've been a target of non-consensual porn, you're far from alone: as many as one in 25 people in the U.S. have had a private image or video of themselves shared without their consent.

One of the most popular websites that people find and spread videos without consent is Pornhub. By filling out Pornhub's content removal form, you can get specific videos removed from that site.

According to Pornhub's form page, you're eligible to use this takedown method if you're reporting "revenge porn, blackmailing, intimidation because a video or photo that was posted on one of our sites that you did not authorize, [or] a comment on a video or photo that reveals personally identifiable information." Anything that you don't want online, that involves you but isn't a copyright claim, counts.

1. Secure your email and other accounts

Before getting started, you should decide where you want correspondence related to this process to go. You're required to enter your email address, and Pornhub will communicate with you about the takedown status via that address. If your regular email is logged in on a shared computer, or you share the login with someone else and don't want that person to be privy to this process, it's a good idea to set up a free, secure ProtonMail account just for this purpose.

It could also help to do a full security check on all of the accounts you use, in general: check this guide for how to protect yourself against stalkerware, which has tips for securing your devices that are useful for anyone, not just stalking victims.

If you think you might ever want to go to the authorities to report the revenge porn that's spread of you, it's important to collect the evidence first. The nonprofit group Without My Consent has instructions on how to properly gather and retain proof, before you request to have it deleted.

2. Collect URLs to the videos you want removed

If you've only heard about these videos being online from other people, you might not know where the videos are. If you trust the person who alerted you, ask them to send you the link. Or, you can try searching for your name on Pornhub—sometimes people use the Pornhub comment sections to dox the women in the videos. If you were in a Girls Do Porn video, for example, you can try variations on "Girls Do Porn" or "GDP" and comb through the results, or try searching your episode number, if you know it.

If you don't want to visit Pornhub.com directly, you can run these searches from Google. Type this into your search bar:

site:pornhub.com “[your name here]”

The results could show videos with your name mentioned in the title or comments, if there are any.

Be warned that the thumbnails and preview images (the still shot that appears before the video plays) might be of yourself or someone you know, and that the entire experience of navigating a porn site can be retraumatizing. If this part of the process is difficult for you, it's okay to ask a trusted confidant to find the videos or collect the links.

3. Set up fingerprinting

At the bottom of the form, there's information on how to prevent future uploads of the same video to Pornhub, using fingerprinting technology. Motherboard's investigation into this tech found that it does still let some videos through, and is far from perfect at catching future uploads. It also doesn't work retroactively: If a video matching yours is already on the site, it won't be automatically deleted.