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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your typical tech founder. Following multiple instances of clients leaking her private explicit images, she was "angry enough to take action" and turned to tech solutions for answers.

"These were striking images, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were weaponized by an individual who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to identify abusers, has won several awards and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

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

A Widespread Issue

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

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

"I expect dignity, I expect consideration, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she continued. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with people I love and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's someone committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

"People think it's unusual but I don't see it any differently to a nutritionist or an financial advisor providing a service," she added.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a technology firm, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the flaws and the modifications that needed to happen," she explained.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after many sleepless nights, investigation and "bugging people" who understand tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

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

When an image is accessed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is specific to that viewer.

This invisible watermark is encoded within the digital file of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being edited and being re-captured with a different camera.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the service you posted it on has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology already exists in Hollywood, it already exists in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a company that has 30 years experience in tech development so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

She expressed hope she believed the technology would also act as a deterrent to potential intimate image abusers.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An expert from a support service said she had seen directly the trauma and guilt this abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the response somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, not just support services, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images of her in her underwear were circulated within her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her youth that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It required years, too long for someone to say to me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the offenders. "There is no offence to consensually send an photo to someone," stated Jess.

"However, it is illegal to distribute that without consent and I think that should always be where the blame is," she affirmed.