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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is not at all your average startup entrepreneur. After multiple instances of clients leaking her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to tech solutions for answers.

"These were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were used against me by someone who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Little over a year after launching her venture, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to identify perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

This marks quite a departure from her background in providing BDSM services, working with clients in the world of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with offenders facing up to two years in prison.

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A study indicates that around 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, explained victims lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I expect dignity, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she continued. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, that's unacceptable, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's someone being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been working as a professional 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 empowered and strong, 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 nutritionist or an accountant giving advice," she remarked.

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 technology firm, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the flaws 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 a lot of late nights, investigation and "bugging people" who understand tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any digital service where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social networks and online sites.

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 embedded into the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being altered and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated without your consent, as long as the service you posted it on has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it is employed in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a different framework," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a company 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 said she believed the technology would also act as a preventive measure to potential perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

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

"If that self-blame is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's really important that the support somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, 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 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 a state of undress were circulated within her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It required years, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to consensually send an photo to someone," said Jess.

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