Police are using students to help them track down 'loverboys' and people committing fraud on dating and chat websites.

The Dutch daily newspaper De Telegraaf reports that the students are being trained by police and then tasked with searching popular internet sites for young people. The students are looking for suspicious posts or chat profiles being used by cyber-criminals.

A successful trial of this new approach has already been conducted by one regional police unit and now a nationwide launch of the program is imminent, according to the paper. Marjolijn Dolfin led the regional trial of the project and says that young people are better able to expose paedophiles, pimps and swindlers operating on the web.

The students visit popular websites and tip the police if they believe illegal activity is taking place. The hope is that the project can be expanded so that the students can also go after rogue webshops.

(dcf/rk)

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