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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas represents far from your average startup entrepreneur. Following repeated occurrences of individuals leaking her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and turned to tech solutions for answers.

"These were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm ashamed of the way that they were weaponized by someone who I don't know," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year after launching her company, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to track abusers, has won several awards and was cited as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review recently.

This marks quite a departure from her previous career in offering BDSM services, working with clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with perpetrators facing up to two years in prison.

It is far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, explained survivors endured feelings of humiliation. "I think 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 confidence, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she added. "The reality that those images could be then shared where I live or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not my mistake, that's someone committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a woman in control, 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 strange but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an accountant providing a service," she added.

She embraces being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I understand 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 flaws and the changes that were necessary," she explained.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after many sleepless nights, investigation and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be used by any digital service where people exchange photos, for instance dating apps, social media and websites.

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

This invisible watermark is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, 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 posted it on has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved 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.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology is already in use in Hollywood, it is employed in live television 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 decades of expertise in developing technology so we know that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

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

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

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

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or service who says 'what did you expect?' 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 fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, saying: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards tackling technology-enabled abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to tackle this alone, not just support services, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

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

"It required years, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the victims to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an photo to someone," stated Jess.

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