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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies not at all your average tech founder. After repeated occurrences of clients leaking her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and turned to technology for a solution.

"These were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were used against me by an individual who I have never met," explained Madelaine.

Just over a year since launching her company, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to track abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

This represents a significant shift from her previous career in offering BDSM services, dominating clients in the world of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to 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 indicates that around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, explained survivors lived with shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a saucy picture 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 negotiable," she added. "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 my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

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

"Some believe it's strange but I don't see it any differently to a personal trainer or an accountant providing a service," she added.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it took someone who has been through it to understand the loopholes and the modifications that needed to happen," she stated.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, investigation and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people share images, for instance dating apps, social media and websites.

When an image is accessed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

This covert marker is encoded within the digital file of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being altered and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the platform you used has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

Currently, one service has implemented her tech and she's in discussions with many others.

Proven Technology, New Application

"The system is already in use in the film industry, it is employed in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a firm that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

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

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a leading helpline commented she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's really important that the support somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing technology-enabled abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images of her in her underwear were shared around her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her teens and 20s that would later shape her women's rights campaigning.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," recalled 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," said Jess.

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