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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your typical startup entrepreneur. After repeated instances of clients distributing her private explicit images, she was "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and looked to technology for a solution.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the way that they were weaponized by someone who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Just over a year since launching her venture, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to track perpetrators, has won several awards and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

This represents a significant shift from her background in offering BDSM services, dominating clients in the world of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

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

It is far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report indicates that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said survivors endured feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I expect dignity, I expect consideration, 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 my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not my choice, that's not my mistake, that's an individual being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is empowered and strong, offering my body as a treat to someone because I wish to," she described.

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

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's crazy 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 maintained she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after many sleepless nights, investigation and "bugging people" who understand tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform 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 invisible forensic watermark which is specific to that viewer.

This covert marker is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being edited and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It means that if you find out your image has been shared without your consent, providing the service you used has the technology embedded, the sharer's information 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.

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a new system," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a firm that has decades of expertise in tech development so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she continued.

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

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a leading helpline said she had seen directly the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse caused for victims.

"When that guilt is reinforced by a misinformed friend or service who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's really important that the support a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing 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 photographs of her in her underwear were shared around her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her teens and 20s that would later inform 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'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the victims to the offenders. "There is no offence to consensually send an photo to someone," stated Jess.

"But it is a crime to distribute that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the responsibility is," she affirmed.