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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents not at all your typical startup entrepreneur. After repeated occurrences of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she was "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and looked to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the way that they were used against me by someone who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year since launching her company, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to identify abusers, has won several awards and was cited as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

This represents a significant shift from her previous career in offering consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the realms of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A study suggests that around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I expect dignity, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she added. "The fact that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with my loved ones 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 working as a dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is empowered and strong, giving my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she said.

"People think it's strange but I don't see it any differently to a nutritionist or an accountant giving advice," she remarked.

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's crazy to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it took someone who has been through it to know the loopholes and the modifications that were necessary," she explained.

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

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social networks and websites.

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

This covert marker 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 discover your image has been shared 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 platform has adopted her tech and she's in talks with many others.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system is already in use in the film industry, it already exists in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a different framework," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a company 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 continued.

She said she hoped the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

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

"When that guilt is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's crucial that the response somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience 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 only fifteen when images of her in her underwear were circulated within her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her women's rights campaigning.

"It required years, too long for someone to tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to consensually send an image to someone," said Jess.

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