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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your average tech founder. After multiple instances of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to technology for a solution.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were weaponized by someone who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Just over a year since founding 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 a significant shift from her background in offering consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the world of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, explained survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you put a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I demand dignity, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she added. "The reality that those images could be then shared where I live or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's someone committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she said.

"Some believe it's unusual but I don't see it any differently to a personal trainer or an accountant giving advice," she remarked.

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I know that it's bizarre, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the flaws and the modifications that were necessary," she explained.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was able 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 online platform where people exchange photos, for instance dating apps, social networks and websites.

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

This invisible watermark is encoded within the digital file of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being edited and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated without your consent, providing the service you used has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

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

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a company that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she added.

She said she believed the technology would also act as a deterrent to would-be perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

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

"When that guilt is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's really important that the response a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, adding: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to tackle this alone, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when images of her in a state of undress were circulated within her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later shape her women's rights campaigning.

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

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to consensually send an photo to someone," said Jess.

"But it is a crime to distribute that non-consensually and I think that should always be where the blame is," she concluded.