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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies not at all your standard tech founder. After multiple occurrences of clients distributing her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to do something about it" 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 used against me by an individual who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Just over a year since launching her venture, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to track perpetrators, has won several awards and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

This represents quite a departure from her previous career in providing BDSM services, 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 offenders facing up to two years in prison.

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report suggests that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, said victims endured feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I expect respect, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she added. "The fact that those images could be then shared in my community 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 someone being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and consistently found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she said.

"Some believe it's strange but I don't see it any differently to a personal trainer or an accountant providing a service," she remarked.

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's remarkable to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a tech company, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the loopholes and the changes that were necessary," she stated.

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

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people share images, for instance dating apps, social networks and online sites.

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

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

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the platform you posted it on has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

Currently, 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 new system," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a firm that has decades of expertise in tech development so we know that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

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

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a leading helpline commented she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt this 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 reinforced so it's really important that the response somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, adding: "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 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 a state of undress were circulated within her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her teens and 20s that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It required years, too long for someone to tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of this crime from the victims to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an image to someone," stated Jess.

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