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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your standard tech founder. After multiple occurrences of individuals leaking her intimate photographs, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and turned to technology for a solution.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the manner that they were used against me by an individual who I don't know," said Madelaine.

Little over a year after founding her company, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to track abusers, 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 background in providing consensual sexual encounters, dominating 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 offenders risking two years in prison.

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you put a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I demand respect, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she added. "The fact that those images could be then shared in my community or with people I love and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's someone being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been working as a professional dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, offering 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 financial advisor giving advice," she remarked.

She embraces being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a tech company, but it required someone who has been through it to understand the flaws and the modifications that were necessary," she explained.

She insisted she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after a lot of 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 accessed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is specific to that viewer.

This covert marker is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being edited and being re-captured with a secondary device.

It means that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the platform you used has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a forensic expert so legal steps can follow.

Currently, one platform has implemented her tech and she's in talks with many others.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system 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 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 believed the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

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

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's really important that the response a victim receives is that they have not done anything wrong," she emphasized.

She noted it was inspiring that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, adding: "It is vital to have this comprehensive strategy towards tackling technology-enabled gender-based 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 images of her in a state of undress were shared around her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her youth that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It took so long, too long for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to consensually send an photo to someone," said Jess.

"However, it is illegal to circulate that non-consensually and I think that should always be where the responsibility is," she concluded.