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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is far from your typical startup entrepreneur. After multiple occurrences of individuals leaking her intimate photographs, she felt "angry enough to take action" and turned to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were weaponized by an individual who I don't know," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year since launching her company, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to identify abusers, has won several awards and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review recently.

This represents a significant shift from her previous career in providing consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

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 far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A report suggests that around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she said.

"I expect dignity, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she added. "The fact that those images could be then shared in my community or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's someone committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and consistently found her work liberating and satisfying. "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 described.

"Some believe it's unusual but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an financial advisor giving advice," she remarked.

She embraces 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 took someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the loopholes and the changes that needed to happen," she explained.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, investigation and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

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

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

This covert marker is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being edited and being photographed with a different camera.

It means that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the service you used has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

To date, one service has adopted her tech and she's in talks with several more.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology is already in use in Hollywood, it already exists in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a company that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

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

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a leading helpline commented she had seen directly the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse caused for victims.

"When that guilt is compounded by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that self blame can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the response a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when photographs of her in a state of undress were circulated within her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her youth that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the victims to the offenders. "There is no offence to consensually send an photo to someone," said Jess.

"But it is a crime to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the responsibility is," she affirmed.