Revenge Porn Laws in Colorado: What Victims Need to Know in 2026

What Colorado Law Says

Colorado enacted its revenge porn law in 2014 under Colorado Revised Statutes Section 18-7-107. Since August 6, 2025, the section is titled "Disclosing a private intimate image or intimate digital depiction for harassment." The offense is a Class 1 misdemeanor, carrying penalties of up to 364 days in jail and a fine of up to $1,000. The statute also requires the court to impose an additional fine of up to $10,000, paid to the crime victim compensation fund.

Since 2025, the offense is a Class 6 felony if the disclosure posed an imminent and serious threat to the safety of the person depicted or their immediate family, and the offender knew or reasonably should have known it. A Class 6 felony carries a presumptive range of 12 to 18 months in prison and fines of $1,000 to $100,000. Repeat offenses are not a felony under this section. The same 2025 law, Senate Bill 25-288, extended the offense to AI-generated or altered "intimate digital depictions" and created a civil claim for their unauthorized disclosure. Colorado was one of the earlier states to address revenge porn legislatively, and the law has been updated to strengthen protections for victims of nonconsensual intimate image distribution.

The 2025 changes are in Senate Bill 25-288 on the Colorado Legislature website.

What Counts as Revenge Porn in Colorado

Colorado's statute specifies the following elements. The content must be a private intimate image, or an intimate digital depiction created or altered with AI or other software. The offender must be 18 or older and must disclose, or threaten to disclose, it through electronic media or a website without the depicted person's consent. The offender must either act with intent to harass, intimidate, or coerce the person, or know or reasonably should have known that the person had a reasonable expectation that the image would remain private. The disclosure or threat must cause physical, emotional, or reputational harm.

Colorado's law applies to images shared on any platform, including social media sites like Instagram, Reddit, and Snapchat, dating websites, messaging services, and email. Because the statute requires either intent to harass or knowledge of the person's expectation of privacy, accidental or inadvertent distribution would typically not meet the legal threshold.

How to Report

Colorado victims should take these steps to seek justice:

  1. Document thoroughly — Screenshot all instances of the images, save complete URLs, capture the poster's account information, and preserve any threatening or harassing messages.
  2. File a police report — Contact your local police department or county sheriff. Major departments in Denver, Colorado Springs, and Boulder have officers familiar with digital crimes. Reference CRS 18-7-107.
  3. Contact the district attorney — Colorado's district attorneys handle misdemeanor and felony prosecutions. Reach out to your judicial district's DA office if police are slow to act.
  4. Report to the FBI — File a complaint with the FBI IC3 for internet-based distribution.
  5. Seek a civil protection order — Colorado courts can issue civil protection orders.

Limitations of Criminal Law

Colorado's criminal law provides important protections, but prosecutors must still prove the offender's intent to harass, or that the offender knew or should have known the image was meant to stay private, as well as resulting harm. Disputes over what the offender knew or intended may create enough doubt to avoid conviction. Intent requirements are a common criticism of many state revenge porn statutes.

The criminal process in Colorado can be lengthy, particularly for misdemeanor cases that may receive lower priority than felonies. During the weeks or months it takes to build a case, the victim's images remain accessible. Even after conviction, there is no automated content removal — the images may persist on platforms, in search results, and on archive sites indefinitely.

Colorado's law also faces jurisdictional challenges when content is posted from outside the state or hosted on servers in other countries. The interconnected nature of the internet means that even content originally posted within Colorado quickly spreads beyond any single state's legal reach.

Removing the Content

Effective content removal must happen in parallel with any criminal investigation, not as a replacement for it but as a necessary complement.

The TAKE IT DOWN Act requires covered platforms to remove qualifying intimate imagery and make reasonable efforts to remove known identical copies within 48 hours of a valid request. The platform and request must meet the law's requirements. See FTC guidance; this is not a universal service turnaround guarantee.

StopNCII.org allows victims to create hashes of their images on their own device that participating platforms can use to detect and block matching uploads. It works only on participating platforms.

IntimaShield offers professional NCII removal services that file removal requests for the links in your case, report sites that ignore them to the companies they depend on, and file Google and Bing de-index requests. Follow-up continues while the content stays live. Monitoring of your names and handles is a separate Shield subscription.

See also: New York's revenge porn law for an Eastern state comparison of misdemeanor approaches.

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