25 Aug, 2026
Digital safety challenges in India are undergoing a rapid shift. Online abuse is no longer limited to isolated uploads or single accounts, it is scaling rapidly across unregulated file-hosting networks, pseudonymous social media profiles, and complex digital ecosystems. Insights drawn from recent casework by Meri Trustline (India’s trusted online safety helpline) highlight key structural shifts in how technology-facilitated abuse, non-consensual content, and targeted harassment operate today.
While caseload numbers remain steady, the volume of digital footprints attached to each incident has doubled. In Year 3, Meri Trustline managed 130 cases but reported 1,137 individual links and accounts, nearly twice as many per case as the previous year. Harmful content is being leaked, archived, remixed, and re-uploaded across multiple platforms with greater speed and scale than ever before.
This is especially concerning in cases involving intimate images, which can continue resurfacing long after the original upload is removed. The Afterlife of Leaked Intimate Images looks more closely at how this cycle of redistribution keeps harm alive.
While major social media platforms still handle the largest volume of reports, smaller adult-content websites and unmonitored file-hosting networks now account for 11% of reported abusive material.
Image-based abuse is increasingly driven by financial gain and social validation rather than personal disputes. Secondary actors use pseudonymous or throwaway accounts to circulate non-consensual intimate material solely to drive web traffic, gain followers, and generate revenue.
Perpetrators deliberately weaponize identity markers, including gender, sexuality, caste, class, and religion, to target victim-survivors. Rather than posting overtly explicit material that triggers automated moderation filters, abusers frequently use coded language, insinuations, edited media, and suggestive captions to keep content online longer.
Women and girls account for nearly 70% of victim-survivors reporting to the helpline. A troubling trend shows unauthorized filming occurring in everyday spaces, including public transport, private areas, and inside gynecological examination rooms with footage later uploaded, sexualized, and monetized online.
Data indicates that approximately 70% of Child Sexual Exploitative and Abuse Material (CSAEM) cases involve a perpetrator known to the child. This pattern aligns directly with offline child sexual abuse dynamics, where harm is inflicted by individuals inside the child’s family, local community, or trusted social circles.
As more young individuals pursue careers as online creators, heightened public visibility brings severe safety risks. Emerging influencers, particularly women and marginalized gender identity groups, face impersonation, targeted sexualization, and coordinated harassment without access to the protective infrastructure available to established public figures.
Navigating formal legal and law enforcement frameworks remains a difficult path for victim-survivors. Systemic delays, procedural burdens, ongoing uncertainty, and invasive scrutiny continue to discourage individuals from pursuing justice through the criminal justice system.
A major shift in recent helpline data reveals that victim-survivors are increasingly seeking professional mental health support alongside legal and technical resolution. This highlights the urgent need for comprehensive care frameworks that address the deep psychological and emotional toll of online abuse.
When non-compliant websites lack functional reporting mechanisms, intervention pathways must adapt. Technical teams are finding effective resolution strategies by coordinating with broader internet infrastructure providers, such as domain registrars, host providers, and search engines, even when host websites refuse to remove content.
Online safety in India cannot depend only on removing individual posts.
The Meri Trustline Year 3 findings show that online abuse now spreads across multiple platforms, accounts, and services. In many cases, the harm also involves legal, emotional, and social consequences.
Therefore, effective digital safety support needs several forms of intervention. These include fast technical action, mental health support, accessible legal assistance, and stronger coordination across civil society and internet service providers.
Most importantly, responses must reflect how online abuse actually works today. Harm can move quickly, cross platforms, and continue even after one piece of content disappears.
For detailed data, methodology, and casework insights, access the complete Meri Trustline 2024-25 Year 3 Report.
25 Aug, 2026
“In the real world, something is happening and no one knows what is going to happen. In the image-world, it has...Read More