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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your standard tech founder. Following repeated occurrences of clients leaking her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to technology for answers.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were used against me by an individual who I have never met," said Madelaine.

Little 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 government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This represents quite a departure from her previous career in providing BDSM services, working with clients in the world of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as revenge porn, is a criminal offence with perpetrators facing up to two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report suggests that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted 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 say, 'you put a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I expect dignity, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she continued. "The fact that those images could be subsequently distributed 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 an error on my part, that's an individual being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, primarily online, for 10 years and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, offering my body as a gift to someone of my own volition," she said.

"People think it's unusual but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an financial advisor providing a service," she remarked.

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I understand that it's unconventional, 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 know the flaws and the modifications that needed to happen," she stated.

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 understand tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any digital service where people share images, for instance dating apps, social networks and online sites.

When an image is accessed by a viewer, it is automatically embedded with an invisible forensic watermark which is specific to that viewer.

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

It means that if you discover your image has been shared without your consent, providing the service you posted it on has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, 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 30 years experience in developing technology so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she added.

She said she believed the technology would also act as a deterrent to would-be perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a leading helpline commented she had seen directly the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a misinformed friend or professional 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 support somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling 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 circulated within her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her youth that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of this crime from the victims to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an photo 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.