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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your standard tech founder. After multiple occurrences of clients leaking her private explicit images, she was "angry enough to take action" and turned to tech solutions for a solution.

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

Little over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to identify perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

This marks quite a departure from her background in offering BDSM services, working with clients in the world of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a criminal offence with offenders risking two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue exclusively faced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by intimate image abuse each year.

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

"I demand respect, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she added. "The reality that those images could be then shared in my community or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's someone being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and consistently found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone of my own volition," she said.

"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 a unique figure in the world of tech. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a tech company, but it required someone who has been through it 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 able to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, research and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance dating apps, social networks 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 embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being edited and being photographed with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been shared without your consent, as long as the service you posted it on has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

Currently, one platform has implemented her tech and she's in talks with several more.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system is already in use in the film industry, it already exists in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a new system," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a company that has decades of expertise 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 said she hoped the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be intimate image abusers.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An expert from a leading helpline said she had seen directly the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be deepened 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 create solutions, adding: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to tackle this alone, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when photographs of her in her underwear were circulated within her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It took so long, too long for someone to say to me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," said Jess.

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the victims to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to willingly share an photo to someone," said Jess.

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