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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your typical tech founder. After multiple occurrences of clients distributing her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and looked to tech solutions for a solution.

"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," explained Madelaine.

Just over a year since founding her venture, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to identify 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 offering consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the world of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

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

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A study suggests that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained victims lived with feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I demand dignity, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she continued. "The reality that those images could be then shared in my community or with people I love and used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's an individual being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone of my own volition," she described.

"People think it's strange but I don't see it any differently to a nutritionist or an financial advisor providing a service," she added.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I know that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it required someone who has been through it to know the flaws and the changes that were necessary," she explained.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, investigation and "bugging people" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance dating apps, social media and websites.

When an image is viewed 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 screen shots, being altered and being re-captured with a different camera.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the service you posted it on has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

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

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology already exists in the film industry, it is employed in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a company that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

She expressed hope she hoped the technology would also act as a deterrent to would-be perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

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

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

She noted it was inspiring that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, adding: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when images of her in a state of undress were shared around her town. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her youth that would later shape her advocacy work.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the victims to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an image to someone," stated Jess.

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