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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is not at all your standard startup entrepreneur. After repeated occurrences of clients leaking her intimate photographs, she was "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and looked to technology for a solution.

"These were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were used against me by someone who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Little over a year since launching her venture, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to track perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as exemplary procedure in an government-commissioned study recently.

This represents a significant shift 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 image-based abuse, is a criminal offence 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 suggests that around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said victims lived with feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I demand dignity, I expect consideration, 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 unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is empowered and strong, giving my body as a gift to someone of my own volition," she said.

"Some believe it's unusual but I don't see it any differently to a nutritionist or an accountant providing a service," she added.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I understand 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 required someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the loopholes and the modifications that needed to happen," she explained.

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

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social networks and online sites.

When an image is accessed by a user, it is automatically embedded with an undetectable digital marker which is unique to them.

This invisible watermark is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being edited and being re-captured with a different camera.

It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the service you used has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so action can be taken.

To date, one platform 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 the film industry, it is employed in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"And we've tested 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 added.

She expressed hope she hoped the technology would also act as a deterrent to would-be perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An advocate from a support service commented she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a misinformed friend or service who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the response a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing tech facilitated 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 multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when photographs of her in a state of undress were shared around her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured 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 was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of intimate image abuse 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 circulate that non-consensually and I think that should always be where the responsibility is," she affirmed.