🔗 Share this article

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your typical tech founder. After multiple occurrences of clients leaking her private explicit images, she was "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to tech solutions for answers.

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

Just over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to track perpetrators, has won several awards and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

This marks a significant shift from her background in providing BDSM services, working with clients in the realms of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

Intimate image abuse, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a punishable crime with perpetrators facing up to two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue exclusively faced by those in the sex industry. A study indicates that around 1.42% of the women in the UK is impacted by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, said survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you put a private image 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 negotiable," she continued. "The fact that those images could be then shared in my community or with my loved ones and employed to cause them pain, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's an individual committing abuse."

A Unique Journey

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 empowered and strong, offering my body as a gift to someone because I wish to," she described.

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

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

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

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be implemented on any digital service where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social networks 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 copy of the image itself and can withstand screenshots, being edited and being photographed with a different camera.

It means that if you find out your image has been shared non-consensually, providing the service you used 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 implemented her tech and she's in talks with many others.

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology is already in use in Hollywood, it is employed in sports broadcasting so this is not brand new technology, it's just a new application and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a firm that has 30 years experience in developing technology so we are confident that this is solid 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.

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a support service said she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame intimate image abuse inflicted on 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 support somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to create solutions, saying: "It is vital to have this comprehensive strategy towards tackling tech facilitated abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to tackle this alone, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images of her in her underwear were shared around her local community. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess endured in her youth that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

"It took so long, an excessive amount of time for someone to tell me, 'you are not to blame' and 'that was wrong'," recalled Jess.

She too is dedicated to removing the stigma of this crime from the victims to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an image to someone," said Jess.

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