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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is not at all your typical tech founder. After multiple occurrences of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and looked to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were weaponized by someone who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year since founding her venture, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to track perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

This marks quite a departure from her previous career in offering consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the realms of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with offenders facing up to two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A report suggests that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, said victims endured feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you put a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I demand dignity, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she added. "The fact that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, giving my body as a treat to someone because I wish to," she said.

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

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a tech company, but it took someone who has been through it to understand the loopholes and the changes that were necessary," she explained.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after many late nights, research and "bugging people" who understand tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be implemented on 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 undetectable digital marker which is specific to that viewer.

This covert marker is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being altered and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It means that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the service you posted it on has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology already exists in the film industry, it already exists in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a different framework," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a company that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

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

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An expert from a leading helpline said she had seen directly the trauma and guilt this abuse caused for victims.

"When that guilt is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's crucial that the response a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when photographs of her in her underwear were circulated within her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later shape her advocacy work.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an photo to someone," said Jess.

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