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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas is not at all your typical tech founder. After multiple occurrences of clients distributing her intimate photographs, she felt "angry enough to take action" and looked to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were used against me by someone who I don't know," explained Madelaine.

Just over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to identify abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

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

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, 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 report 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 endured shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you put a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I expect dignity, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are up for debate," 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 my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and consistently found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am 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 said.

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

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I know that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a tech company, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the loopholes and the modifications that were necessary," she explained.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was able to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, research and "bugging people" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be used by any digital service where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social media and websites.

When an image is accessed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged 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 withstand screenshots, being altered and being photographed with a different camera.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated without your consent, as long as the platform you posted it on has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

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 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 partnering with a company that has decades of expertise in tech development so we know that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she added.

She said she hoped the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be intimate image abusers.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

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

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's really important that the response somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, adding: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing tech facilitated gender-based abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images of her in a state of undress were circulated within her town. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her youth that would later shape her women's rights campaigning.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," said Jess.

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an photo to someone," said Jess.

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