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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is far from your average startup entrepreneur. After repeated instances of clients distributing her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and turned to tech solutions for a solution.

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

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

This represents quite a departure from her previous career in offering BDSM services, dominating clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with perpetrators facing up to two years in prison.

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, said survivors endured feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she said.

"I demand dignity, I expect consideration, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she added. "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 an error on my part, that's an individual being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

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 gift to someone of my own volition," she said.

"Some believe it's unusual but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an accountant providing a service," she remarked.

She embraces being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the flaws and the changes that were necessary," she stated.

She insisted 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 understand tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any digital service where people exchange photos, for instance dating apps, social networks and online sites.

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

This covert marker is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being edited and being photographed with a secondary device.

It means that if you discover your image has been shared non-consensually, as long as the platform you used has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"The system already exists in Hollywood, it is employed in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a different framework," explained Madelaine.

"And we've tested 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 continued.

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

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a support service said she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame intimate image abuse caused for victims.

"When that guilt is compounded by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame 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 noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing tech facilitated gender-based abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, 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 town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her teens and 20s that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It took so long, too long for someone to tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an image to someone," stated Jess.

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