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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies not at all your standard tech founder. Following multiple occurrences of individuals leaking her intimate photographs, she felt "angry enough to take action" and turned to technology for a solution.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the way that they were used against me by an individual who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Just over a year since launching her venture, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to identify perpetrators, has won several awards and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review recently.

This represents quite a departure from her background in providing consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

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 far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A study suggests that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

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

"I demand dignity, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she added. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not a decision I made, 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, mainly online, for a decade and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is empowered and strong, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she said.

"People think it's unusual but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an financial advisor giving advice," she added.

She embraces being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the flaws and the modifications that were necessary," she explained.

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

How Does the Technology Work?

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

When an image is accessed by a user, it is automatically embedded with an invisible forensic watermark which is specific to that viewer.

This invisible watermark is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being edited and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It means that if you discover your image has been circulated without your consent, as long as the platform you posted it on has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

To date, one platform has adopted her tech and she's in talks with many others.

Proven Technology, New Application

"The system is already in use in Hollywood, it already exists in live television 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 collaborating with a company that has decades of expertise in tech development so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

She expressed hope she believed the technology would also act as a preventive measure to potential perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An expert from a support service said she had seen first-hand the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse inflicted on victims.

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

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards tackling tech facilitated abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, not just support services, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when photographs of her in her underwear were shared around her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her teens and 20s that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It took so long, too long for someone to say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," 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 image to someone," said Jess.

"But it is a crime to distribute that without consent and I think that should invariably be where the blame is," she affirmed.