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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your typical tech founder. After multiple occurrences of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she was "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to technology for answers.

"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," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year since founding her company, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to track perpetrators, has won several awards and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

This represents a significant shift from her background in providing consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the world of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a criminal offence with perpetrators risking 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 women in the UK is impacted by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I expect dignity, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she continued. "The reality that those images could be then shared 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 an error on my part, that's someone being an abuser."

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 dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, giving 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 financial advisor giving advice," she added.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I know that it's unconventional, 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 understand the flaws and the modifications that were necessary," she stated.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after many sleepless nights, research and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any digital service where people share images, for instance dating apps, social networks and websites.

When an image is viewed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is specific to that viewer.

This invisible watermark is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being altered and being re-captured with a different camera.

It means that if you find out your image has been circulated without your consent, as long as the platform you used has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

Currently, one platform has implemented her tech and she's in discussions with several more.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system already exists in Hollywood, it already exists in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"We have validated 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 believed the technology would also act as a deterrent to would-be intimate image abusers.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a leading helpline commented she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a misinformed friend or service who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's really important that the support somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing technology-enabled gender-based 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 endured in her youth that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It required years, an excessive amount of time for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," said Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the victims to the offenders. "There is no offence to consensually send an image to someone," stated Jess.

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