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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your standard startup entrepreneur. After repeated occurrences of clients leaking her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to do something about it" and looked to tech solutions for a solution.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the manner 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 recommended as best practice in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This represents a significant shift from her previous career in providing BDSM services, working with clients in the realms of BDSM.

A Widespread Issue

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as revenge porn, is a criminal offence with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, said survivors lived with shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I demand respect, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she continued. "The fact that those images could be then shared where I live or with people I love and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's someone committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, giving my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

"Some believe it's strange but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an accountant providing a service," she remarked.

She embraces being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I know that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it required someone who has been through it to understand the loopholes and the modifications that were necessary," she stated.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy 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 online platform where people share images, for instance dating apps, social media and websites.

When an image is accessed by a user, it is automatically embedded with an invisible forensic watermark 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 photographed with a different camera.

It means that if you discover your image has been shared non-consensually, providing the service you used has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a firm that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she continued.

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

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

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

"When that guilt is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's crucial that the support somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, saying: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling tech facilitated gender-based 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 her underwear were shared around 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, an excessive amount of time for someone to tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to consensually send an photo to someone," stated Jess.

"But it is a crime to distribute that without consent and I think that should always be where the blame is," she concluded.