🔗 Share this article

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents far from your standard tech founder. Following multiple occurrences of clients leaking her private explicit images, she felt "sufficiently outraged to take action" and looked to technology for answers.

"These were striking images, I'm unapologetic of the photographs, I'm embarrassed of the way that they were weaponized by someone who I don't know," explained Madelaine.

Just over a year after founding her venture, Image Angel, which uses covert digital tracking to identify perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review earlier this year.

This represents quite a departure from her background in offering BDSM services, working with clients in the world of kink and bondage.

A Widespread Issue

The non-consensual sharing of private images, often referred to as image-based abuse, is a criminal offence 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, explained victims lived with shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you anticipate?'," she said.

"I expect respect, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she continued. "The reality that those images could be then shared in my community or with my loved ones and used to hurt them, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not my mistake, that's someone being an abuser."

A Unique Journey

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for a decade and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a woman in control, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone of my own volition," she described.

"People think it's unusual but I view it similarly to a personal trainer or an accountant giving advice," she remarked.

She welcomes being a unique figure in the world of tech. "I understand that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it required someone who has been through it to know the loopholes and the modifications 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, investigation and "consulting experts" who understand tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people share images, for instance dating apps, social media and online sites.

When an image is viewed by a viewer, it is seamlessly tagged with an invisible forensic watermark which is unique to them.

This invisible watermark is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can survive screenshots, being edited and being photographed with a secondary device.

It means that if you find out your image has been shared without your consent, 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 forensic expert so action can be taken.

To date, one platform has implemented her tech and she's in discussions with several more.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

"This technology is already in use in Hollywood, it is employed in live television so this is not brand new technology, it's just a novel use and a different framework," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a company that has decades of expertise in tech development so we know that this is solid 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 perpetrators.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An expert from a leading helpline said she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a misinformed friend or service who says 'what did you expect?' that guilt can really be reinforced so it's crucial that the response somebody is provided with is that they have not done anything wrong," she stated.

She added it was fantastic that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, adding: "It is really important to have this comprehensive strategy towards tackling 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 images of her in a state of undress were circulated within her town. It was the beginning of multiple violations Jess experienced in her teens and 20s that would later inform her advocacy work.

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

She too is dedicated to eliminating the shame of this crime from the survivors to the offenders. "It isn't a crime to consensually send an photo to someone," stated Jess.

"However, it is illegal to distribute that non-consensually and I think that should always be where the blame is," she concluded.