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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is far from your average tech founder. After multiple occurrences of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and looked to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were used against me by someone who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to track perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This marks a significant shift from her previous career in offering BDSM services, working with clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with offenders facing up to two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A study suggests that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said victims lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I demand respect, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she continued. "The fact that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's someone committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, giving my body as a treat to someone because I wish to," she said.

"People think it's unusual but I don't see it any differently to a personal trainer or an accountant giving advice," she remarked.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I know that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a tech company, but it took someone who has been through it to understand the flaws and the changes that needed to happen," she stated.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after many late nights, research and "bugging people" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social networks and websites.

When an image is accessed by a viewer, it is automatically embedded with an invisible forensic watermark which is unique to them.

This invisible watermark is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being altered and being photographed with a different camera.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the platform you posted it on has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

To date, one service has adopted her tech and she's in discussions with several more.

Proven Technology, New Application

"The system already exists in the film industry, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a firm that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she added.

She said she hoped the technology would also act as a deterrent to would-be perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An expert from a support service said she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is compounded by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's really important that the response a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, saying: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards tackling technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when photographs of her in a state of undress were shared around her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later shape her advocacy work.

"It required years, an excessive amount of time for someone to tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to willingly share an photo to someone," said Jess.

"However, it is illegal to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the responsibility is," she concluded.