BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is far from your typical tech founder. After multiple occurrences of individuals leaking her private explicit images, she was "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to tech solutions for a solution.
"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were weaponized by an individual who I have never met," explained Madelaine.
Just over a year since launching her venture, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to track abusers, has won several awards and was recommended as best practice in an government-commissioned study recently.
This represents a significant shift from her previous career in offering BDSM services, dominating clients in the world of BDSM.
The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with perpetrators risking two years in prison.
It is not at all an issue exclusively faced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A report suggests that around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.
Madelaine, 37, said survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she said.
"I demand respect, I expect consideration, 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 my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's beyond, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual being an abuser."
Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, mainly 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, giving my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she said.
"People think it's unusual but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an accountant giving advice," she added.
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 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 stated.
She insisted 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 understand tech.
Image Angel can be implemented on any digital service where people exchange photos, for instance dating apps, social networks and websites.
When an image is viewed by a user, it is seamlessly tagged with an invisible forensic watermark which is specific to that viewer.
This invisible watermark is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being edited and being re-captured with a secondary device.
It ensures that if you discover your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the service you used has the system integrated, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.
Currently, one service has implemented her tech and she's in discussions with several more.
"The system already exists in Hollywood, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a different framework," said Madelaine.
"We have validated it, we're partnering with a company that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we know that this is solid and what we now need to do is test it at scale," she continued.
She expressed hope she hoped the technology would also act as a preventive measure to potential perpetrators.
An advocate from a support service said she had seen first-hand the panic, distress and self-blame intimate image abuse caused for victims.
"When that guilt is compounded by a misinformed friend or professional 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 response somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she stated.
She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, adding: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards tackling technology-enabled abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to tackle this alone, not just support services, it needs to be this integrated effort."
TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen 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 shape 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'," said Jess.
She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of intimate image abuse from the survivors to the perpetrators. "There is no offence to consensually send an image 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.
