🔗 Share this article

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas embodies not at all your standard startup entrepreneur. Following multiple occurrences of clients distributing her intimate photographs, she felt "angry enough to do something about it" and looked to tech solutions for a solution.

"Those were beautiful pictures, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm ashamed of the way that they were used against me by someone who I have never met," stated Madelaine.

Little over a year since founding her venture, Image Angel, which employs invisible forensic watermarking to identify abusers, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

This marks quite a departure from her previous career in offering consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the world of kink and bondage.

The Pervasive Problem

The non-consensual sharing of private images, commonly known as revenge porn, is a punishable crime with perpetrators risking two years in prison.

It is not at all an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A report suggests that approximately 1.42% of the UK female population is affected by this form of abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, explained survivors lived with feelings of humiliation. "In my view a lot of people will comment, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I demand dignity, I expect respect, and I expect trust, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she added. "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 my mistake, that's an individual being an abuser."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, primarily online, for a decade and always found her work empowering and fulfilling. "I am as a dominant woman, 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 don't see it any differently to a personal trainer or an accountant providing a service," she remarked.

She welcomes being a unique figure 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 founder of a technology firm, but it required someone who has been through it to know the flaws and the changes that were necessary," she explained.

She maintained she was not technically inclined and was able to build her company after a lot of late nights, investigation and "bugging people" who understand tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

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

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

This covert marker is embedded into the digital file of the image itself and can withstand screen shots, being edited and being photographed with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been shared non-consensually, providing the platform you posted it on has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be encoded in the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

Currently, one service has adopted her tech and she's in discussions with several more.

Proven Technology, New Application

"This technology is already in use in the film industry, it already exists in sports broadcasting so this is not an untested concept, it's just a new application and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"We have validated it, we're partnering with a firm that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we are confident that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she continued.

She said she believed the technology would also act as a deterrent to would-be intimate image abusers.

Removing Stigma, Shifting Blame

An expert from a leading helpline commented she had seen directly the panic, distress and self-blame intimate image abuse inflicted on victims.

"If that self-blame is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or service who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's crucial that the response somebody is provided with is that they have committed no error," she emphasized.

She noted it was fantastic that Madelaine was using her experience to create solutions, adding: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards tackling technology-enabled gender-based abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to tackle this alone, no one helpline, it needs to be this integrated effort."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when images of her in a state of undress were shared around her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess endured in her youth that would later shape her advocacy work.

"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 passionate about removing the stigma of this crime from the survivors to the perpetrators. "It isn't a crime to willingly share an photo to someone," stated Jess.

"But it is a crime to circulate that without consent and I think that should always be where the responsibility is," she affirmed.