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

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

Just over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to track perpetrators, has won several awards and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study recently.

This marks quite a departure from her previous career in providing consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the world of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with offenders facing up to two years in prison.

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced 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, thirty-seven, explained victims lived with shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will comment, '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 don't see why those are negotiable," she continued. "The fact that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not my mistake, that's someone being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

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

"Some believe it's strange but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an accountant giving advice," 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 founder of a tech company, but it required someone who has been through it to understand the flaws 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, research and "bugging people" 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 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 embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being altered and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the service you posted it on has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"The system is already in use in the film industry, it is employed in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a new system," explained 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 solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

She expressed hope she believed the technology would also act as a preventive measure to potential intimate image abusers.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An expert from a leading helpline said she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's really important that the response a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She noted it was inspiring that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, adding: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing tech facilitated 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 only fifteen when photographs of her in her underwear were shared around her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her teens and 20s that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It required years, an excessive amount of time for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

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

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