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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your standard tech founder. Following multiple occurrences of individuals distributing her intimate photographs, she was "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and turned to technology for answers.

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

Just over a year after founding her company, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to identify perpetrators, has won several awards and was cited as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study recently.

This marks a significant shift from her previous career in offering consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained survivors lived with shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you put 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 fail to understand why those are up for debate," she added. "The fact that those images could be then shared where I live or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's someone being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and consistently found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, giving my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she described.

"People think it's strange but I don't see it any differently to a personal trainer or an financial advisor giving advice," she added.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly 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 technology firm, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the loopholes and the modifications that needed to happen," she stated.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after many late nights, research and "bugging people" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be implemented on any digital service where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social media and online sites.

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 copy of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being edited and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It means that if you discover your image has been shared without your consent, providing the service 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 legal steps can follow.

To date, one service has implemented her tech and she's in discussions with many others.

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology already exists in Hollywood, it already exists in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a new system," said Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a firm that has decades of expertise in tech development 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 would-be intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a support service said she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or service who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt 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 bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling tech facilitated 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 photographs of her in her underwear were circulated within her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later shape her advocacy work.

"It required years, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an image to someone," stated Jess.

"However, it is illegal to distribute that non-consensually and I think that should always be where the responsibility is," she concluded.