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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your typical tech founder. Following repeated occurrences of clients distributing her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to do something about it" and looked to technology for answers.

"Those were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the way that they were weaponized by an individual who I have never met," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to identify abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

This marks a significant shift from her previous career in offering consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the world of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A study suggests that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said victims endured shame and stigma. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she said.

"I demand respect, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she added. "The fact that those images could be then shared in my community or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not my choice, that's not my mistake, that's someone being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and consistently found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is empowered and strong, giving my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she said.

"People think it's strange but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an accountant providing a service," she added.

She embraces being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I know that it's bizarre, it's crazy to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it required someone who has been through it to understand the loopholes and the changes that needed to happen," she explained.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after a lot of late nights, investigation and "bugging people" who understand tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be used by any digital service where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social media and websites.

When an image is accessed by a viewer, it is automatically embedded with an invisible forensic watermark which is specific to that viewer.

This invisible watermark is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being edited and being photographed with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been shared non-consensually, as long as 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 legal steps can follow.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"The system is already in use in Hollywood, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"We have validated 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 said she hoped the technology would also act as a deterrent to potential intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a support service said she had seen first-hand the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded 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 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, saying: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing tech facilitated gender-based 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 images of her in a state of undress were shared around her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her youth that would later shape her advocacy work.

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

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of this crime from the survivors to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an image to someone," stated Jess.

"But it is a crime to distribute that without consent and I think that should always be where the responsibility is," she concluded.