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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your average startup entrepreneur. After multiple occurrences of clients leaking her private explicit images, she was "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and turned to technology for a solution.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were weaponized by someone who I don't know," 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 exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review recently.

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

The Pervasive Problem

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

It is far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A study suggests that around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, explained survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a private image 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 up for debate," she continued. "The fact that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community 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 being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years 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 gift to someone of my own volition," she described.

"Some believe it's strange but I don't see it any differently to a nutritionist 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 an individual who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it required someone who has been through it to understand the flaws and the modifications that needed to happen," she stated.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after many sleepless nights, research and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people share images, for instance dating apps, social networks and online sites.

When an image is viewed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

This covert marker is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can withstand 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, as long as the service you used has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

To date, 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," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a company that has 30 years experience in tech development so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she added.

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

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a support service said she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's crucial that the response a victim receives 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 tackling technology-enabled abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, not just support services, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when photographs of her in a state of undress were shared around her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her youth that would later shape her women's rights campaigning.

"It required years, an excessive amount of time for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of this crime from the survivors 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 invariably be where the responsibility is," she affirmed.