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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies not at all your standard tech founder. After multiple instances of individuals leaking her intimate photographs, she was "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and looked to technology for a solution.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the way that they were used against me by someone who I don't know," stated Madelaine.

Just over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to identify abusers, has won several awards and was cited as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This represents quite a departure from her previous career in offering BDSM services, dominating clients in the world of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with perpetrators facing up to two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A study indicates that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained survivors endured feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I demand respect, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she added. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not my choice, that's not my mistake, that's an individual being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, primarily 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 because I wish to," she described.

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

She welcomes being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I know that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a technology firm, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the flaws and the modifications that were necessary," she stated.

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

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social media and websites.

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 digital file of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being edited and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the platform you posted it on has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

Currently, one platform has adopted her tech and she's in discussions with many others.

Proven Technology, New Application

"The system already exists in the film industry, it already exists in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a different framework," explained Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a firm that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

She expressed hope she believed the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a support service said she had seen first-hand the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the response a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing technology-enabled gender-based 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 images of her in a state of undress were circulated within her town. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later inform 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 shouldn't have happened'," said Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to willingly share an image 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 concluded.