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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your typical startup entrepreneur. After repeated instances of individuals leaking her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to tech solutions for answers.

"These were striking images, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were used against me by someone who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year after founding her company, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to track abusers, has won several awards and was cited as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This represents quite a departure from her background in offering BDSM services, working with clients in the realms of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as revenge porn, is a criminal offence with offenders risking two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A report suggests that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, said victims endured 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 expect respect, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she added. "The reality that those images could be then shared where I live 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 practicing as a professional 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 confident and powerful, offering 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 personal trainer or an accountant providing a service," she remarked.

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 been through it to understand the flaws and the changes that were necessary," she stated.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after a lot of late nights, research and "bugging people" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any digital service where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social networks and online sites.

When an image is viewed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

This covert marker is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being altered and being photographed with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the platform you used has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

To date, one service has implemented her tech and she's in discussions with several more.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

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

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a company that has 30 years experience in tech development so we are confident that this is solid 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 potential intimate image abusers.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An expert from a leading helpline said she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame this abuse caused for victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's really important that the response a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, adding: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing technology-enabled abuse, because a single solution 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 photographs of her in her underwear were circulated within her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her youth that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

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

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of this crime from the victims to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to consensually send 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.