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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your typical tech founder. Following repeated instances of individuals leaking her intimate photographs, she felt "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to tech solutions for a solution.

"These were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the way that they were weaponized by someone who I have never met," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year after launching her company, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to track abusers, has won several awards and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review recently.

This marks a significant shift from her background in providing BDSM services, dominating clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as image-based abuse, 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 study suggests that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said survivors lived with shame and stigma. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I demand respect, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she added. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's someone being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

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

"Some believe it's strange but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an financial advisor giving advice," she added.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it took someone who has been through it to understand the flaws and the changes that needed to happen," she explained.

She insisted she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after a lot of late nights, investigation and "bugging people" who understand tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people exchange photos, 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 specific to that viewer.

This covert marker is encoded within the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being altered and being re-captured with a different camera.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been shared without your consent, providing the service you used has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system is already in use in Hollywood, it already exists in sports broadcasting 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 decades of expertise in tech development so we know 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 intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a support service commented she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's really important that the response a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing technology-enabled 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 a state of undress were circulated within her town. 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 shouldn't have happened'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the victims to the offenders. "There is no offence to willingly share an photo 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 affirmed.