At the Professionals Online Safety Helpline, we have been seeing a huge increase of professionals, especially teachers, being impersonated on social media platforms, often by students. We’ve put together some guidance about what we can do to support schools and professionals being affected by impersonation.
What is Impersonation?
Impersonation often happens in the form of a fake account being set up by students or people in the wider community, usually to mock a teacher or someone in the school community. Being impersonated can often be very distressing and can pose significant safeguarding concerns.
Responding to Impersonation Accounts
It is important to make sure that the situation is handled correctly when dealing with an impersonation account. In most instances, the Designated Safeguarding Lead or equivalent should be involved to decide the correct course of action based on school policies and guidance.
In serious cases of impersonation, such as if an account was impersonating a teacher and sending students inappropriate messages, then the police may need to be involved. In this instance, no action should be taken without police involvement, to avoid interfering with any potential evidence.
Reporting Impersonation Accounts
Whilst the helpline will try to help however it can to support people reporting impersonation accounts, the individual being impersonated often needs to make the report directly to the social media platform involved.
Social media platforms will usually need to verify whether the account is real or an impersonation, so they can avoid removing someone’s genuine account. To help verify impersonation claims, social media platforms may ask to see your ID and collect further information.
Making a Report
Making an impersonation report can vary depending on which social media platform you need to make a report to. We’ve brought together various reporting avenues for the most common social media platforms we see being used to create impersonation accounts. The reporting process can vary depending on whether you have an account with the platform or not, and we provided information for each instance.
Depending on whether you have a Facebook account or not, you can visit the following support pages:
If you don’t have an account, you can fill in a form to make a report.
Depending on whether you have an Instagram account or not, you can visit the following support pages:
If you don’t have an account, you can fill in a form to make a report.
To report an impersonation account on Snapchat, you can follow these instructions:
- Visit the Snapchat Support Website.
- Choose ‘I want to Report a Safety Concern’.
- Choose ‘My Snapchat Account’.
- Select ‘Another Snapchat account is pretending to be me’.
- Select ‘Yes’ to ‘Still need Help?’
- Fill in the form.
To make an impersonation report to TikTok, you can follow these instructions:
- Visit the TikTok website.
- Enter your contact information and username.
- Choose Topic ‘Report Inappropriate Content’.
- Select ‘Report a User’ under ‘Tell us More’.
- Choose ‘Impersonated Account’ under ‘Reason for Reporting’.
- Include any further information and attachments such as screenshots.
Most X/Twitter accounts stating to be a ‘parody’ will most likely not reach the threshold to be considered impersonation.
To make an impersonation report to X/Twitter, you can follow these instructions:
- Visit the X/Twitter Support website.
- Select the most appropriate response under ‘Please tell us more’.
- Fill in the form and attach evidence with confirmation of your identity.
Updating your Privacy Settings
It can be hard to prevent someone from creating an impersonation account, however, there are measures you can put in place to make sure your account privacy settings are up to date to make it harder for anyone attempting to impersonate you.
To keep your profiles safe online, you can download our free social media checklists from our website, which can help teachers and young people stay in control of their privacy settings across platforms such as TikTok, Snapchat, Facebook, and more.
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Further Resources
Articles and Further Information
SWGfL Strengthens International Collaboration on Digital Safety in Europe
5th November 2025
Sharing UK Expertise on Tackling Image-Based Abuse at the UN Cybercrime Convention
28th October 2025
England Schools Make Progress on Online Safety But Gaps in Training Remain
27th October 2025
SWGfL: 25 Years of Innovation, Safeguarding, and Global Impact
24th October 2025