Your private information was posted on X: how to get it removed, and what X will not remove

If someone posted your home address, phone number, identity documents or other private details on X, X’s own rules are on your side. Its private information policy prohibits publishing other people’s private information without their permission, and you can report it through X’s dedicated private information report. What the policy does not cover is just as important: X says it does not treat gossip, rumours, accusations or allegations as private information, so a smear post needs a different route.

This guide covers both: what X removes under its privacy rules, how to report it so the report is actually actionable, and what is left when the post is an accusation rather than your phone number.

The short answer

• Address, phone, ID, bank details, medical information: report under X’s private information policy. These are the clearest cases.
• Photos or videos of you shared without consent: report under the same private content rules. Intimate images have their own, stricter category.
• Accusations, rumours, “exposing” threads: not private information under X’s policy. Look at harassment and impersonation rules first, then a legal request if the content is unlawful where you live.
• Copies in Google results: Google’s Results about you tool covers phone numbers, home addresses and email addresses.
• Physical danger: if someone is threatening you or turning up where you live, contact the police first and report second.

What X counts as private information

X’s private information policy lists the types of information that cannot be shared without the permission of the person it belongs to:

• home address or physical location information, such as street addresses or GPS coordinates;
• identity documents, such as government-issued IDs or national identity numbers;
• contact information, such as non-public personal phone numbers or email addresses;
• financial account information, such as bank account or card details;
• health information, such as medical records or biometric data;
• the identity of an anonymous user.

The policy also prohibits threatening to expose someone’s private information, offering or asking for a reward in exchange for posting it, and asking for money in exchange for not posting it.

X weighs context when it reviews a report. It treats physical location and phone numbers as higher risk than other information. It may decide that information you published yourself elsewhere, such as a phone number on your own website, is not private. Home addresses are the exception: X says it may act on them even when they are publicly available, because of the risk of physical harm. And it looks at intent: information shared to harass someone is treated differently from information shared to help someone in a crisis.

What X does not count as private

This is the part most guides leave out, and it decides whether your report works. X’s policy names the following as information it does not consider private:

• names;
• birthdates or ages;
• places of education or employment;
• the location of commercial properties or business premises, where that is public;
• descriptions of physical appearance;
• gossip, rumours, accusations and allegations;
• screenshots of messages, unless they contain private information such as a phone number.

So a post that says where you work and accuses you of something is, in most cases, not a private information violation. Reporting it under the privacy category is likely to be rejected, and a rejected report costs you time. The routes for that kind of post are further down.

How to report it

There are two official entry points.

1. From the post itself. Use the report option on the post and choose the category for private information. This is fastest when the violation is obvious, for example a street address in plain text.
2. Through X’s private information form. In the X Help Center, the Safety and Sensitive Content form has an option for private content being posted, and asks whether the content belongs to you, to someone you are authorised to represent, or to someone else. Use the form when you need to explain context: that a number is not published anywhere by you, or that several accounts are posting the same details.

Before you report, save the evidence. Take screenshots that show the post, the account name and the date, and copy each post’s URL. Posts get deleted and accounts get renamed once reports start arriving, and the evidence matters if you later need the police or a lawyer.

Who can report

X says anyone can report private information that has been shared in a clearly abusive way. When the abuse is less obvious, X may need to hear from the person the information belongs to, or from an authorised representative such as a lawyer. For photos and videos of private individuals, X needs a first-person report from the person shown, or from a parent, guardian, lawyer or other legal representative. This right to privacy rule does not apply to public figures.

Intimate images

Sexual or intimate images shared without consent are prohibited outright, and X’s report form has a separate path for them, including a US Take It Down Act report option. If you are dealing with intimate images, report on every platform where they appear, not only X. Our guide to getting intimate images removed on Instagram and Facebook covers Meta’s priority channel for the same situation.

When the post is an accusation, not your address

Accusations that do not expose private information have three possible routes, and they work in this order.

1. Other X rules. Targeted harassment, threats of violence, and accounts impersonating you or your business are covered by separate X rules with their own report categories. A coordinated campaign of posts aimed at one person can fall under harassment even when no single post contains private information.

2. A legal request. If the content breaks no X rule but is unlawful where you live, for example because it is defamatory, X’s process is to review the content against its rules first, and then accept a legal request to withhold it through its legal request submission site. Two things to know before you go down this road. If X accepts the request, the content is usually withheld in the country whose law it breaks rather than deleted worldwide. And X says it will notify the affected user and include a copy of the takedown request, unless a court order prevents it. A legal request is a legal step, which is why we prepare the file for the client’s own lawyer to send rather than sending it ourselves.

3. Nothing. Criticism, negative reviews and reporting on matters of public interest are lawful speech in most places. No legitimate route removes them, and anyone who promises otherwise is selling you something that does not exist.

Getting it out of Google results

Removing a post from X does not remove it from search results straight away, and screenshots of it may live on other sites. Google’s Results about you tool lets you request removal of results that show your phone number, home address or email address. Google is clear about the limit: removing a search result does not delete the information from the web page it appears on. For that, the site owner, or in this case X, still has to remove the original.

What not to do

• Do not mass report. Recruiting friends to report the same post does not speed up a review and can get your own accounts restricted.
• Do not argue in the replies. A public reply keeps the post in front of more people and can be screenshotted for the next round.
• Do not pay for “insider” removals. Services that claim contacts inside X, or that offer to take posts down for a fee through unofficial means, are a common scam. They often ask for your login details, which turns a privacy problem into a hacked account.

Our guide to doxxing on Reddit covers the same situation on Reddit, where the rules and the reporting routes differ.

When to get help

Most clear-cut doxxing reports can be filed by the person affected, using the steps above. Help is worth considering when the information keeps reappearing from new accounts, when the content is an accusation and you need to know whether a legal route exists, or when a business is being targeted. That is the work behind our X content removal service. It starts with a free case review, we work only through X’s official report and legal channels, and we tell you honestly when a post is lawful speech that will stay up.