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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is far from your standard tech founder. Following repeated occurrences of clients distributing her private explicit images, she was "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to tech solutions for answers.

"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.

Just over a year after launching her venture, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to identify perpetrators, has won several awards and was cited as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

This marks a significant shift from her background in offering BDSM services, dominating clients in the world of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

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

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, said survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you put a saucy picture 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 continued. "The fact that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not my choice, that's not my mistake, that's an individual committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, 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 giving advice," she remarked.

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I know that it's bizarre, it's crazy to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a technology firm, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the flaws and the changes that were necessary," she stated.

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

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be used by any digital service where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social media and websites.

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

This covert marker 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 means that if you find out your image has been shared without your consent, as long as the platform you posted it on has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology already exists in Hollywood, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a company that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

She said she believed the technology would also act as a preventive measure to potential intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

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

"When that guilt is reinforced by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's crucial that the response a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, adding: "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 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 a state of undress were circulated within her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her teens and 20s that would later shape her advocacy work.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time 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. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an image to someone," stated Jess.

"However, it is illegal to distribute that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the blame is," she affirmed.