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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 felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to tech solutions for answers.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the way that they were weaponized by an individual who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Little over a year since launching her venture, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to track abusers, has garnered significant recognition 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 BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as revenge porn, is a criminal offence with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, explained victims endured shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you put a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I expect respect, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she added. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's an individual being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is empowered and strong, offering my body as a treat to someone because I wish to," she described.

"People think it's unusual but I don't see it any differently to a personal trainer or an accountant giving advice," she added.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's crazy 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 know the flaws and the modifications that were necessary," she explained.

She insisted she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after many sleepless nights, research 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 dating apps, social networks and websites.

When an image is viewed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an invisible forensic watermark which is specific to that viewer.

This invisible watermark is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being edited and being re-captured with a different camera.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated without your consent, as long as the service 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 legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system is already in use in Hollywood, it is employed in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a new system," said Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a firm that has 30 years experience in tech development so we are confident that this is solid 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 preventive measure to potential perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a support service said she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt this abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or service 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 support somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this comprehensive strategy 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 integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images 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 shape her women's rights campaigning.

"It required years, an excessive amount of time 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 willingly share 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.