"Building Protective Tech- Dealing with Leaked Intimate Imagery" with Madelaine Thomas

This week, we're exploring technology designed to respond to online harms.

We spoke with Madelaine Thomas, founder of Image Angel, about forensic watermarking, how the technology works, and the challenges of building tools to respond to the non-consensual sharing of intimate images.

We also discuss the opportunities, limitations, and alternative approaches to tackling this issue.

The talk was hosted by Charlotte Maher on July 2nd 2026. Music featured is courtesy of Artlist.

Recorded live in our Discord Server: https://discord.com/invite/bellingcat

TW: Discussion of sexual exploitation and image abuse

Links:

The company website: https://www.imageangel.co.uk/

And Image Angel's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/imageangel_/

If you're interested in this talk you might find our previous talk with CNN interesting: (HUGE TW for sexual abuse) https://rss.com/podcasts/bellingcatstagetalk/2909687/

Revenge Porn Helpline: https://stopncii.org/

Bellingcat Open Source Toolkit: https://bellingcat.gitbook.io/toolkit