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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is far from your standard tech founder. After repeated occurrences of individuals leaking her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to take action" and turned to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were weaponized by someone who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Little over a year since founding her venture, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to identify abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review recently.

This marks quite a departure from her previous career in offering BDSM services, working with clients in the world of BDSM.

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with perpetrators facing up to two years in prison.

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, explained victims lived with shame and stigma. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I demand dignity, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she added. "The fact that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's someone committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, primarily 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, giving my body as a gift to someone of my own volition," she said.

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

She welcomes being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I understand 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 took someone who has been through it to know the loopholes and the modifications that were necessary," she explained.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after a lot of late nights, investigation and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

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

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

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 non-consensually, providing the platform you used has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"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," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a firm that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," 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 said she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame 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 crucial that the support a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, not just support services, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when photographs of her in her underwear were circulated within her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her advocacy work.

"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 eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the victims to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an photo to someone," stated Jess.

"But it is a crime to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the responsibility is," she concluded.