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

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were used against me by an individual who I have never met," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to identify abusers, has won several awards and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

This represents a significant shift from her background in offering BDSM services, working with clients in the world of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as revenge porn, is a criminal offence with offenders 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 women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you put a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I expect 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 where I live or with people I love and used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's someone committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing 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 empowered and strong, offering my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she described.

"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 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 founder of a technology firm, but it took someone who has been through it to understand the flaws and the modifications that were necessary," she stated.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was able 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 share images, for instance dating apps, social networks and websites.

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

This covert marker is encoded within the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being altered and being re-captured with a different camera.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been shared non-consensually, as long as the platform you used has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a firm that has decades of expertise in tech development so we know 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 leading helpline commented she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is compounded by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's really important that the support a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, adding: "It is vital 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 multi-layered response."

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

"It required years, too long for someone to tell 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 victims to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an image to someone," stated Jess.

"However, it is illegal to distribute that without consent and I think that should invariably be where the responsibility is," she affirmed.