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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your standard startup entrepreneur. After repeated instances of individuals leaking her private explicit images, she was "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to technology for answers.

"Those were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were used against me by an individual who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Just over a year after launching her company, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to track abusers, has garnered significant recognition 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 consensual sexual encounters, 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 facing up to two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population 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 saucy picture out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I demand respect, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she continued. "The fact that those images could be then shared where I live or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

"Some believe it's unusual but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an financial advisor providing a service," she remarked.

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it took someone who has been through it to understand the loopholes and the modifications that needed to happen," she explained.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, research and "consulting experts" 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 websites.

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

This invisible watermark is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being altered and being photographed with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the service you used has the system integrated, the sharer's information 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 discussions with several more.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system 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 novel use and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a firm that has 30 years experience in tech development so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

She expressed hope she believed the technology would also act as a preventive measure to potential perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

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

"When that guilt is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's really important that the support a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled 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 integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images of her in a state of undress were shared around her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her teens and 20s that would later shape her women's rights campaigning.

"It took so long, 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 eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the victims to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an image to someone," said Jess.

"However, it is illegal to circulate that without consent and I think that should always be where the responsibility is," she concluded.