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Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas embodies not at all your typical tech founder. After multiple instances of clients distributing her intimate photographs, she felt "angry enough to take action" and turned to tech solutions for answers.

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

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

This marks quite a departure from her previous career in providing consensual sexual encounters, working with clients in the realms of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with perpetrators facing up to two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A study indicates that around 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, explained victims lived with shame and stigma. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you put a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she said.

"I demand respect, I expect consideration, and I expect trust, 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 my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, giving my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she described.

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

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand 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 a lot of sleepless nights, investigation and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

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

When an image is viewed by a viewer, it is automatically embedded with an undetectable digital marker which is specific to that viewer.

This invisible watermark is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being altered and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It means that if you find out your image has been shared without your consent, as long as the service you used has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

To date, one platform has adopted her tech and she's in discussions with many others.

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology is already in use in Hollywood, it is employed in sports broadcasting 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 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 said she hoped the technology would also act as a deterrent to potential perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a support service commented she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is compounded by a misinformed friend or service who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be reinforced so it's crucial 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, saying: "It is vital to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing 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 images of her in her underwear were shared around her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later shape her women's rights campaigning.

"It took so long, too long for someone to say to me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," said Jess.

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

"But it is a crime to distribute that non-consensually and I think that should invariably be where the blame is," she affirmed.