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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies not at all your standard tech founder. Following repeated instances of individuals leaking her private explicit images, she felt "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 weaponized by someone who I don't know," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking 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 background in offering consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the world of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

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

It is far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A report suggests that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, explained survivors endured shame and stigma. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I demand respect, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she continued. "The fact that those images could be then shared 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 an error on my part, that's someone committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and consistently found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, giving my body as a treat to someone because I wish to," she described.

"Some believe it's unusual but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an financial advisor providing a service," she remarked.

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

When an image is viewed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker 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 without your consent, as long as the platform you used has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

To date, 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 the film industry, it already exists in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a company that has 30 years experience in tech development so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she added.

She expressed hope she hoped the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a support service commented she had seen directly the trauma and guilt this abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt 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 inspiring that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, adding: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images of her in her underwear were shared around her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her youth that would later inform her advocacy work.

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

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to consensually send an photo to someone," stated Jess.

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