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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas is not at all your standard tech founder. After multiple instances of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she was "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to technology for a solution.

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

Just over a year after founding her company, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to identify perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This marks a significant shift from her background in offering BDSM services, dominating clients in the world of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with offenders risking two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said victims endured shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will say, '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 up for debate," she continued. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, 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 10 years and consistently found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she said.

"People think it's strange but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an accountant giving advice," she remarked.

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a tech company, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the flaws and the modifications that needed to happen," she stated.

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

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social networks 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 covert marker is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being altered and being photographed with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the platform 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 platform has adopted her tech and she's in discussions with many others.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it already exists in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a different framework," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a company that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

She said she believed the technology would also act as a deterrent to potential intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a leading helpline commented she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a misinformed friend or service who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the support somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, adding: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, 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 first of several incidents Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later inform 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 passionate about removing the stigma of this crime from the victims to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to consensually send an photo to someone," stated Jess.

"However, it is illegal to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should always be where the blame is," she affirmed.