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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your standard startup entrepreneur. After repeated instances of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she was "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and turned to technology for answers.

"Those were striking images, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were weaponized by an individual who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year since launching her company, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to track perpetrators, has won several awards and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

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

The Pervasive Problem

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

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

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I demand dignity, I expect consideration, 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 a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's an individual being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

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

"People think it's strange but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an financial advisor providing a service," she remarked.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "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 took someone who has been through it to understand the loopholes and the changes that were necessary," she explained.

She insisted she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after many sleepless nights, research 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 networks and websites.

When an image is accessed 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 survive screenshots, being edited and being photographed with a different camera.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been shared without your consent, as long as the platform you used has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology already exists in Hollywood, it is employed in sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a company that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she continued.

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

Changing the Narrative

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

"If that self-blame is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance 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 support a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling tech facilitated 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 images of her in a state of undress were circulated within her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her youth that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It required years, too long for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

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

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