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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your standard tech founder. After repeated instances of clients leaking her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and turned to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were striking images, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the way that they were used against me by someone who I don't know," stated Madelaine.

Just over a year since founding her venture, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to track perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study recently.

This marks a significant shift from her previous career in offering BDSM services, working with clients in the realms of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with offenders facing up to 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 UK female population is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, said victims lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I demand dignity, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she continued. "The fact that those images could be then shared in my community or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and always 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 treat to someone of my own volition," she said.

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

She welcomes being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I know that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the loopholes and the changes that were necessary," she explained.

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.

How Does the Technology Work?

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

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

This covert marker is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being edited and being photographed with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been shared non-consensually, providing the service you used has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"The system already exists in Hollywood, it is employed in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a new system," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a firm that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we know that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

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

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

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

"When that guilt is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's really important that the support somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, adding: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing technology-enabled abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when photographs of her in a state of undress were shared around her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her youth that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the offenders. "There is no offence to consensually send an photo to someone," said Jess.

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