🔗 Share this article

Professional dominatrix Madelaine Thomas represents not at all your typical tech founder. After repeated instances of clients leaking her intimate photographs, she was "angry enough to do something about it" and turned to technology for answers.

"These were striking images, I'm not ashamed of the pictures, I'm embarrassed of the manner that they were used against me by someone who I have never met," said Madelaine.

Just over a year after founding her company, Image Angel, which uses invisible forensic watermarking to identify perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was recommended as exemplary procedure in an independent pornography review recently.

This represents a significant shift from her background in providing consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the world of BDSM.

The Pervasive Problem

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

It is far from an issue exclusively faced by those in the adult entertainment sector. A study indicates that approximately 1.42% of the women in the UK is affected by this form of abuse on an annual basis.

Madelaine, 37, said victims endured 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 noted.

"I expect dignity, I expect consideration, and I expect trust, and I fail to understand why those are up for debate," she added. "The fact that those images could be subsequently distributed where I live or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, that's unacceptable, that's not my choice, that's not my mistake, that's someone committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and always found her work liberating and satisfying. "It's me as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a gift to someone of my own volition," she said.

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

She embraces being something of an anomaly in the world of tech. "I know that it's unconventional, it's crazy to think that an individual who was a dominatrix is now a founder of a technology firm, but it took someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the loopholes and the modifications that were necessary," she explained.

She insisted she was not in the least bit techy and was able to build her company after a lot of sleepless nights, investigation and "consulting experts" who know about tech.

How Does the Technology Work?

Image Angel can be implemented on any online platform where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social media and websites.

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

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

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the service you used has the technology embedded, the sharer's information will be hidden within the image and can be extracted by a data recovery specialist so legal steps can follow.

To date, one platform has adopted her tech and she's in discussions with many others.

An Established Method for a New Purpose

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

"We have validated it, we're collaborating with a firm 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 believed the technology would also act as a deterrent to potential intimate image abusers.

Changing the Narrative

An advocate from a support service said she had seen first-hand the trauma and guilt this abuse inflicted on victims.

"When that guilt is compounded by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'what did you expect?' that self blame can really be deepened so it's crucial that the support a victim receives is that they have committed no error," she stated.

She added it was inspiring that Madelaine was leveraging her ordeal to bring about change, adding: "It is vital to have this comprehensive strategy towards addressing tech facilitated gender-based abuse, because a single solution is going to be able to tackle this alone, no one helpline, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was only fifteen when images of her in a state of undress were shared around her town. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her youth that would later inform her advocacy work.

"It required years, too long for someone to tell me, 'it wasn't your fault' and 'that shouldn't have happened'," said Jess.

She too is passionate about removing the stigma of this crime from the victims to the offenders. "There is no offence to willingly share an photo to someone," stated Jess.

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