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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies not at all your average tech founder. After repeated occurrences of clients leaking her intimate photographs, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to technology for answers.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the way that they were weaponized by someone who I don't know," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to track abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study recently.

This represents quite a departure from her background in providing consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the world of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a criminal offence with offenders risking two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A study indicates that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

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

"I expect respect, I expect consideration, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she continued. "The reality that those images could be then shared where I live 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 committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing 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 described.

"People think it's unusual but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an accountant providing a service," she added.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I know that it's bizarre, 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 modifications that were necessary," she stated.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, investigation and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be implemented on any digital service where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social media and websites.

When an image is accessed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is specific to that viewer.

This invisible watermark is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being altered and being photographed with a different camera.

It means that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the platform you used has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

To date, one service has implemented her tech and she's in talks with several more.

Proven Technology, New Application

"The system already exists in Hollywood, it is employed in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a new system," said Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a company that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we are confident 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 deterrent to potential intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a support service said she had seen directly the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse caused for victims.

"When that guilt is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's crucial that the response 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 abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to solve this problem, not just support services, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when images of her in her underwear were shared around her local community. It was the first of several incidents 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 tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of this crime from the survivors to the offenders. "There is no offence to consensually send an image 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.