From BDSM Practitioner to Tech Founder: An Unconventional Battle Against Revenge Porn

BDSM practitioner Madelaine Thomas represents not at all your typical tech founder. Following multiple instances of clients leaking her private explicit images, she felt "angry enough to take action" and turned to tech solutions for answers.

"These 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," explained Madelaine.

Just over a year since founding her venture, Image Angel, which employs covert digital tracking to track perpetrators, has garnered significant recognition and was cited as best practice in an independent pornography review recently.

This marks a significant shift from her previous career in providing consensual sexual encounters, dominating clients in the world of BDSM.

A Widespread Issue

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

It is far from an issue uniquely experienced by those in the sex industry. A study indicates that around 1.42% of the UK female population is impacted by intimate image abuse each year.

Madelaine, 37, said survivors lived with shame and stigma. "I think a lot of people will say, 'you shared a private image out on the internet, what do you expect?'," she noted.

"I expect respect, I expect consideration, and I expect confidence, and I don't see why those are up for debate," she added. "The reality that those images could be then shared where I live or with people I love and employed to cause them pain, that's unacceptable, that's not a decision I made, that's not my mistake, that's an individual committing abuse."

An Unconventional Path

Madelaine has been practicing as a professional dominatrix, mainly online, for 10 years and consistently found her work liberating and satisfying. "I am as a dominant woman, a woman who is confident and powerful, offering my body as a treat to someone of my own volition," she said.

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

She welcomes being something of an anomaly in the technology sector. "I know that it's unconventional, it's remarkable to think that someone who was a dominatrix is now a creator of a tech company, but it required someone who has experienced it firsthand to know the loopholes and the changes that needed to happen," she explained.

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 know about tech.

Understanding the Tech Solution

Image Angel can be used by any digital service where people exchange photos, for instance social connection apps, social media and websites.

When an image is accessed by a user, it is automatically embedded 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 survive screenshots, being altered and being photographed with a secondary device.

It ensures that if you find out your image has been circulated non-consensually, as long as the platform you posted it on has the technology embedded, the viewer's details will be encoded in the image and can be retrieved by a data recovery specialist so action can be taken.

To date, one service has adopted her tech and she's in talks with several more.

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 an untested concept, it's just a novel use and a new system," explained Madelaine.

"And we've tested it, we're partnering with a firm that has decades of expertise in developing technology so we know that this is solid and what we now need to do is deploy it widely," she added.

She expressed hope she believed the technology would also act as a preventive measure to potential perpetrators.

Changing the Narrative

An expert from a leading helpline commented she had seen first-hand the panic, distress and self-blame intimate image abuse caused for victims.

"When that guilt is reinforced by a uninformed acquaintance or professional who says 'well, why did you take those images in the first place?' that guilt can really be deepened so it's really important that the response a victim receives 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, saying: "It is vital to have this multi-layered approach towards addressing tech facilitated abuse, because no one tool is going to be able to solve this problem, no one helpline, it needs to be this multi-layered response."

TV presenter Jess Davies was just 15 when images of her in a state of undress were circulated within her local community. It was the first of several incidents Jess experienced in her youth 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'," 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 willingly share an photo to someone," said Jess.

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