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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents not at all your standard startup entrepreneur. After repeated instances of individuals leaking her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to take action" and looked to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were used against me by an individual who I don't know," stated Madelaine.

Just over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to track perpetrators, has won several awards and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study recently.

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

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as revenge porn, is a criminal offence with perpetrators facing up to two years in prison.

It is far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report suggests that around 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said survivors endured feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she said.

"I demand dignity, I expect respect, 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 beyond, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is empowered and strong, giving my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

"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 know 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 experienced it firsthand to know the loopholes and the changes that were necessary," she explained.

She maintained she was not technically inclined 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 implemented on any online platform where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social media 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 invisible watermark is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being edited and being re-captured with a different camera.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated without your consent, 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 service has implemented her tech and she's in talks with several more.

Proven Technology, New Application

"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.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a firm that has 30 years experience in tech development so we know that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she added.

She said she believed the technology would also act as a deterrent to potential perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a support service commented she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a misinformed friend 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 really important that the support somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She noted it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing tech facilitated gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to tackle this alone, not just support services, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when photographs of her in her underwear were circulated within her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her youth that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of this crime from the victims to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to willingly share an photo to someone," stated Jess.

"However, it is illegal to circulate that without consent and I think that should always be where the blame is," she concluded.