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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is far from your standard tech founder. Following multiple occurrences of individuals leaking her intimate photographs, she was "angry enough to take action" and looked to tech solutions for a solution.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the way that they were weaponized by an individual who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Just over a year since launching her company, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to track perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as best practice in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This represents a significant shift from her background in providing BDSM services, dominating clients in the world of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with offenders risking two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, said survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you shared a private image 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 continued. "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 being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she said.

"Some believe it's strange but I don't see it any differently to a nutritionist or an financial advisor providing a service," she remarked.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a technology firm, but it took someone who has been through it to know the flaws and the changes that needed to happen," she explained.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was able to build her company after many sleepless nights, investigation and "bugging people" 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 media and websites.

When an image is accessed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is specific to that viewer.

This invisible watermark is encoded within 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 discover your image has been circulated without your consent, providing the platform you used has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

Currently, one service has adopted her tech and she's in talks with many others.

Proven Technology, New Application

"The system already exists in the film industry, it already exists in live television so this is not brand new technology, 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 decades of expertise 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 said she hoped the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a support service said she had seen first-hand the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or service 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 committed no error," she emphasized.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling tech facilitated 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 just 15 when photographs of her in a state of undress were shared around her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her advocacy work.

"It required years, too long 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 this crime from the victims to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to consensually send an image to someone," stated Jess.

"However, it is illegal to distribute that non-consensually and I think that should always be where the responsibility is," she concluded.