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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is not at all your average tech founder. Following multiple occurrences of clients distributing her private explicit images, she was "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to technology for answers.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were used against me by someone who I have never met," explained Madelaine.

Just over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to identify abusers, has won several awards and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

This represents quite a departure from her previous career in providing consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the world of BDSM.

A Widespread Issue

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as revenge porn, is a criminal offence with offenders facing up to two years in prison.

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

Madelaine, 37, said survivors lived with shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you put a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I expect respect, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she added. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with people I love 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."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a treat to someone because I wish to," she described.

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

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it took someone who has been through it to understand the flaws and the changes that needed to happen," she explained.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, investigation and "consulting experts" who understand tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

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

When an image is viewed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an invisible forensic watermark which is unique to them.

This covert marker is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being altered and being re-captured with a different camera.

It ensures that if you find out 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 retrieved by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it is employed in sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a new system," explained Madelaine.

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

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

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

"If that self-blame is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the response somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She noted 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 no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, 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 shared around her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later shape her advocacy work.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

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

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