youngmafbog - "am an IT specialist it would be easy for me to do and I am more than happy to give up a couple of hours a week if it meant putting scum peado's away.
I was contacted and contracted to an organisation that was targeting individual sites containing child abuse images.
The founding copmpany for the contract was Mircosoft, and unbeknown to be and my colleagues, we were gathering inforamtion for what became Operation Ore.
We were given software that allowed us to access the sites without the site owner being aware - obviously a stranger infiltrating rings alarm bells, so the site is simply shut down and re-set somewhere else on the web. Our software meant we left no electronic footprint, but extracted the images and contact details for the police.
Paedophiles hide in plain sight - so out of the thousands and thousands of sites I looked at the contained photos of the insides of car engines (yes there are thousands of them!) and other hobby sites over about a six week period.
I found three sites only, but the images that burned into my brain in the time it took me to hit the 'back' button remain with me now, more than ten years later.
Believe me, you don't want to lightly suggest that 'volunteers' can do this sort of surfing - it's not feasible.
Microsoft kindly offered counselling for any of us affcted, which I fortunately did not need, but the thought of doing this sort ofg thing over an extended period makes my head hurt.
What you think you could do, and what you actually could do, are pretty far apart on this subject - take it from me.