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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your standard tech founder. After repeated occurrences of individuals leaking her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and turned to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were striking images, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were weaponized by an individual who I don't know," stated Madelaine.

Just over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to identify abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study recently.

This represents a significant shift from her previous career in offering BDSM services, working with clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

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

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

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

"I demand respect, I expect consideration, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she added. "The reality that those images could be then shared where I live or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, that's unacceptable, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's someone committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and consistently found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, giving my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she said.

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

She welcomes 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 creator of a technology firm, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the flaws and the changes that needed to happen," she explained.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after many late nights, investigation and "consulting experts" who understand tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people share images, for instance dating apps, social media and websites.

When an image is viewed by a viewer, it is automatically embedded 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 screenshots, being edited and being photographed with a secondary device.

It means that if you discover your image has been circulated without your consent, as long as the service you posted it on has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it is employed in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a new system," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a firm that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she continued.

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

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a support service said she had seen directly the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or service who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's crucial that the response somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She noted it was inspiring that Madelaine was using her experience to bring about change, adding: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing tech facilitated gender-based abuse, because a single solution 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 just 15 when photographs of her in her underwear were shared around her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her youth that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

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

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to willingly share an image to someone," stated Jess.

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