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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is not at all your standard tech founder. After repeated instances of individuals distributing her private explicit images, she was "sufficiently outraged to do something about it" and turned to tech solutions for a solution.

"These were beautiful pictures, 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 after founding her company, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to identify perpetrators, has won several awards and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study earlier this year.

This represents quite a departure from her previous career in offering BDSM services, dominating clients in the world of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with offenders 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 women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, said survivors lived with shame and stigma. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I demand respect, I expect consideration, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she added. "The reality that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with people I love and used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's someone committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and consistently found her work empowering and fulfilling. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone of my own volition," she described.

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

She embraces being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I know that it's bizarre, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a technology firm, but it took someone who has been through it to know the loopholes and the changes that were necessary," she explained.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after many sleepless nights, investigation and "bugging people" who understand tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people share images, for instance social connection apps, social media and websites.

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

This covert marker is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being altered and being photographed with a secondary device.

It means that if you find out your image has been circulated without your consent, providing the platform you posted it on has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology already exists in the film industry, it is employed in live television so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a different framework," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a firm that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

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 directly the panic, distress and self-blame intimate image abuse caused for victims.

"When that guilt is reinforced by a misinformed friend or service who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that self blame can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the response somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to bring about change, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing technology-enabled abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, no one helpline, 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 local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her advocacy work.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to say to me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the offenders. "There is no offence to willingly share an photo to someone," said Jess.

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