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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas represents far from your standard startup entrepreneur. Following repeated occurrences of clients distributing her private explicit images, she was "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to tech solutions for answers.

"Those were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were weaponized by someone who I have never met," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to track abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

This marks a significant shift from her previous career in providing BDSM services, working with clients in the world of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

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

It is far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A study suggests that around 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, explained survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I demand dignity, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she continued. "The reality that those images could be then shared in my community or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, that's unacceptable, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's an individual committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years 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 treat to someone because I wish to," she said.

"People think it's unusual but I view it similarly to a nutritionist or an accountant giving advice," she added.

She embraces being something of an anomaly 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 creator of a tech company, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the loopholes and the changes that were necessary," she explained.

She insisted she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after many late nights, investigation and "consulting experts" who understand tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people share images, for instance dating apps, social media and websites.

When an image is accessed by a user, it is automatically embedded with an invisible forensic watermark which is unique to them.

This invisible watermark is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being edited and being photographed with a different camera.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated 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 data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

Currently, one service has adopted her tech and she's in discussions with many others.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology already exists 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.

"We have validated 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 added.

She expressed hope she hoped the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

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

"If that self-blame is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the response a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to bring about change, saying: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, not just support services, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images of her in her underwear were circulated within her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her women's rights campaigning.

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

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an image to someone," said Jess.

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