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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents not at all your standard startup entrepreneur. Following repeated occurrences of individuals leaking her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and looked to tech solutions for a solution.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were used against me by someone who I don't know," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year after launching her company, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking 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 background in providing consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the realms of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as revenge porn, is a criminal offence with offenders risking two years in prison.

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

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

"I expect respect, I expect consideration, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she continued. "The reality that those images could be then shared where I live or with people I love and used to hurt them, 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 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.

"People think it's strange but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an accountant giving advice," she added.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I know that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it took someone who has been through it to understand the flaws and the modifications that needed to happen," she stated.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, research and "consulting experts" who understand tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance dating apps, social media and online sites.

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

This invisible watermark is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being altered and being photographed with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been shared without your consent, providing the service you posted it on has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system already exists in the film industry, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a company that has decades of expertise in tech development 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 perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

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

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a misinformed friend or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's really important that the support a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, saying: "It is vital to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, 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 circulated within her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her youth that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"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 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," said Jess.

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