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BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is far from your average startup entrepreneur. Following multiple occurrences of clients distributing her intimate photographs, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to tech solutions for answers.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm unapologetic of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were used against me by an individual who I don't know," explained Madelaine.

Little over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to track abusers, has won several awards and was cited as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

This marks a significant shift from her background in providing consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the world of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, often referred to as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with offenders risking 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 impacted by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, explained victims lived with shame and stigma. "In my view a lot of people will say, 'you shared a saucy picture out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.

"I expect respect, I expect respect, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she added. "The fact that those images could be then shared where I live or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not a decision I made, that's not an error on my part, that's someone committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

"Some believe it's strange but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an accountant providing a service," she remarked.

She embraces being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's remarkable 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 know the loopholes and the changes that needed to happen," she stated.

She maintained she was not in the least bit techy and was managed to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, research and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

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

When an image is accessed by a viewer, it is automatically embedded with an invisible forensic watermark which is specific to that viewer.

This invisible watermark is encoded within the copy of the image itself and can survive screen shots, being edited and being photographed with a different camera.

It means that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the platform you posted it on has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

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

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 an untested concept, it's just a new application and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a company that has 30 years experience in tech development so we are confident that this is reliable 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 would-be intimate image abusers.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

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

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

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, adding: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards tackling tech facilitated 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 photographs of her in a state of undress were circulated within her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her teens and 20s that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

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

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of this crime from the survivors to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an image to someone," said Jess.

"However, it is illegal to distribute that without consent and I think that should always be where the blame is," she affirmed.