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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your standard tech founder. After multiple occurrences of individuals leaking her private explicit images, she was "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and looked to technology for answers.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were weaponized by an individual who I have never met," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year since launching her company, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to identify perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

This marks a significant shift from her background in offering consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the world of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with perpetrators facing up to two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A study indicates that around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I expect 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 subsequently distributed in my community or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's unacceptable, 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 professional dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and consistently found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me 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 described.

"Some believe it's strange but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an accountant providing a service," she added.

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I know that it's bizarre, 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 been through it to know the loopholes and the modifications that were necessary," she stated.

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

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any digital service where people exchange photos, for instance dating apps, social networks and online sites.

When an image is accessed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an invisible forensic watermark which is unique to them.

This covert marker is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being edited and being photographed with a different camera.

It means that if you find out your image has been shared without your consent, providing the service you used has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology 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 developing technology so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she added.

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

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a support service commented she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims.

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

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was using her experience to bring about change, adding: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled 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 a state of undress were shared around 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 was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of this crime from the survivors to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an image 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.