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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies far from your standard startup entrepreneur. Following multiple instances of clients distributing her private explicit images, she was "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to technology for answers.

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

Just over a year since launching her company, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to identify abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as best practice in an government-commissioned study recently.

This marks a significant shift from her background in offering consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the world of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as revenge porn, is a criminal offence with offenders facing up to two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report suggests that around 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, thirty-seven, said victims endured feelings of humiliation. "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 expect respect, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are negotiable," she added. "The reality that those images could be then shared 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 an individual being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am 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 don't see it any differently to a personal trainer or an financial advisor giving advice," she remarked.

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I know that it's bizarre, it's crazy to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a tech company, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the flaws and the modifications that needed to happen," she explained.

She insisted she was not technically inclined and was managed to build her company after many sleepless nights, investigation and "consulting experts" who understand tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

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

When an image is viewed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged 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 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 system integrated, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

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

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"The system already exists in the film industry, it already exists in sports broadcasting 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 partnering with a firm that has 30 years experience in tech development so we know that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

She said she hoped the technology would also act as a preventive measure to would-be intimate image abusers.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An expert from a support service said she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims.

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

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, adding: "It is really important to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling tech facilitated abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when photographs of her in her underwear were circulated within her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her women's rights campaigning.

"It required years, too long for someone to tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the perpetrators. "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 affirmed.