Doxxing and Intimate Image Abuse: What Singapore’s New Online Safety Law Covers

Two of the most damaging forms of online harm in Singapore today are doxxing, where someone’s private information is exposed publicly without consent, and intimate image abuse, where sexual or intimate images are shared without the consent of the person shown. Both are now explicitly addressed under the Online Safety (Relief and Accountability) Act 2025, which gives victims a clearer legal footing and a faster route to relief than existed before. Here is what each term actually means under the law, and what options a victim now has.

What Doxxing Means Under the Law

Doxxing generally refers to the act of publishing someone’s private or identifying information, such as their home address, workplace, phone number, or personal photos, without their consent and usually with the intention or effect of exposing them to harassment, intimidation, or harm. It often happens in the context of an online dispute, where one party responds to being angered or embarrassed by digging up and publicly posting information about the other person to encourage others to harass them.

Under the Online Safety (Relief and Accountability) Act, doxxing sits within the first priority group of online harms that the Online Safety Commission was set up to address from the outset, alongside online harassment and online stalking. This reflects how seriously the harm is treated, since being doxxed can expose a person to real world risks, not just online unpleasantness, including unwanted visits to their home or workplace by people who found that information through the doxxing post.

What Intimate Image Abuse Covers

Intimate image abuse refers to the non-consensual sharing of sexual or intimate images or videos of a person, sometimes referred to informally as revenge pornography, though the legal concept is broader than that popular term suggests. It covers situations where images were originally shared consensually within a relationship but are later distributed without consent after the relationship ends, as well as images obtained or created without the subject’s knowledge or consent in the first place.

This category is treated with particular seriousness under Singapore’s online harms framework because the harm to a victim can be severe and long lasting, affecting their relationships, employment, and mental wellbeing, often compounded by the fact that once an image has spread online, it can be extremely difficult to have every copy removed. Intimate image abuse was also included in the Online Safety Commission’s first priority group of harms, reflecting the urgency lawmakers placed on giving victims fast avenues for relief.

How Victims Can Seek Relief

A victim of doxxing or intimate image abuse generally has more than one avenue available under Singapore’s current legal framework. The Protection from Harassment Act, which has been in force since 2014, already provides criminal offences and civil remedies for various forms of harassment and image based abuse, including the ability to apply for a Protection Order against the person responsible. This route existed before the Online Safety Commission was set up and remains available.

What the Online Safety Commission adds is a route focused specifically on getting the harmful content down quickly and holding platforms and group administrators accountable for how they handle it, rather than requiring the victim to prove their case in court before anything happens. A victim can report the content to the platform first, and if that does not resolve the matter, escalate it to the Commission, which has the power to direct takedowns and restrict the accounts of those responsible.

How This Law Works Alongside POHA

It is worth understanding how the new Online Safety Commission framework relates to the older Protection from Harassment Act, since the two are not competing options so much as complementary layers. POHA gives a victim the ability to pursue a specific individual through the courts, seeking a Protection Order, damages, or in serious cases a criminal conviction against the person responsible for the doxxing or image sharing. This can be a powerful remedy, but it can also take time, and it is focused on the individual perpetrator rather than on getting the content removed from wherever it has spread.

The Online Safety Commission framework, by contrast, is built around speed and around the platforms and spaces where the content is being shared, rather than purely around punishing the individual responsible. A victim does not necessarily need to choose one over the other. Many cases are likely to involve both a POHA claim against the identified perpetrator and a parallel report to the Online Safety Commission aimed at getting the content taken down as quickly as possible, since the two routes serve different immediate goals.

Why These Two Harms Were Prioritised First

When the Online Safety Commission’s framework was rolled out, lawmakers had to decide which categories of online harm to address first, given the wide range of harmful conduct that happens online. Doxxing and intimate image abuse, along with online harassment, online stalking, and image based child abuse, were placed in the first priority group specifically because these are the harms most likely to cause severe, immediate, and sometimes irreversible damage to a victim’s safety and wellbeing.

Other categories of online harm, such as online impersonation, the publication of false material, or incitement of enmity, are being addressed in later phases as the framework matures. This phased approach reflects a practical reality: building the systems, guidance, and enforcement capability needed to handle every category of online harm all at once would have delayed the launch of protections for the most urgent cases, so the government chose to prioritise the harms judged most likely to cause serious, fast moving damage to victims.

What to Do if You Are a Victim

If you believe you are a victim of doxxing or intimate image abuse, taking a few practical steps early can help regardless of which legal route you eventually pursue. Keeping screenshots of the content, noting the date and platform where it appeared, and avoiding engaging directly with the person responsible can all help preserve evidence and avoid escalating the situation further. Reporting the content to the platform itself is generally the first step under the Online Safety Commission framework, and doing so promptly, alongside seeking advice on a potential POHA claim if you wish to pursue the individual responsible, gives you the widest range of options going forward.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I take legal action directly against the person who doxxed me instead of going through the Commission?

Yes. The Protection from Harassment Act already allows a victim to pursue the individual responsible directly, including applying for a Protection Order or seeking damages through the courts, and this route remains available alongside, not instead of, reporting to the Online Safety Commission.

Does the law cover images or information shared privately in a small group chat, not just publicly?

The framework is generally concerned with content being shared without consent and the harm this causes, regardless of whether it was shared to a small private group or posted publicly, since even limited sharing within a group chat can cause significant harm and spread further once shared.

What if the person who shared the content is using an anonymous or fake account?

The Online Safety Commission’s powers to direct platforms to take down content and restrict accounts do not necessarily require the victim to first identify who is behind an anonymous account, since the Commission can act against the content and the account itself, though identifying the person may still matter for pursuing a claim under POHA.

Can a victim request that content be permanently removed rather than just temporarily taken down?

The framework is designed to give victims a genuine remedy rather than a purely temporary fix, and directions issued by the Commission are intended to result in content actually being removed, though a determined perpetrator re-uploading content elsewhere remains a practical challenge that victims may need to address through repeated reports.

Does this law apply to doxxing or intimate image abuse that happened before the Act came into force?

Generally, new legal frameworks of this kind apply from their commencement date onward, though ongoing harm, such as content that continues to be accessible or is still being shared even though it was originally posted earlier, may still fall within the Commission’s ability to act, depending on how the specific provisions are applied.