🔗 Share this article

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas is far from your average tech founder. After repeated occurrences of clients leaking her private explicit images, she was "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to tech solutions for a solution.

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

Just over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to track perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended 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 kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as image-based abuse, is a criminal offence 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 report indicates that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by intimate image abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, said victims endured shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you put a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she noted.

"I expect dignity, I expect consideration, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are negotiable," she added. "The fact that those images could be subsequently distributed in my community or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's beyond, that's not my choice, that's not an error on my part, that's someone being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been working as a dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a dominant woman, a woman who is empowered and strong, offering 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 nutritionist or an financial advisor giving advice," she remarked.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the technology sector. "I understand that it's bizarre, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to understand the flaws and the changes that needed to happen," 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.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance dating apps, social networks and online sites.

When an image is viewed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an undetectable digital marker which is specific to that viewer.

This invisible watermark is embedded into the copy of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being altered and being re-captured with a different camera.

It means that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, providing the service you used has the system integrated, the sharer's information will be hidden within 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

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it already exists in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a different framework," said Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're collaborating with a company that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we are confident that this is reliable and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

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

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a support service said she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse caused for victims.

"When that guilt is reinforced by a misinformed friend or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's crucial that the support somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, adding: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing tech facilitated gender-based abuse, because no one tool 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 only fifteen when photographs of her in her underwear were circulated within her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later inform her women's rights campaigning.

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

She too is passionate about eliminating the shame of this crime from the victims to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an photo to someone," said Jess.

"However, it is illegal to circulate that without consent and I think that should invariably be where the responsibility is," she affirmed.