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It looks like a normal bathroom tile. But when amateur internet sleuths managed to locate it, they found the missing piece in an international child abuse investigation.

This was one of the clues that led to the arrest of a suspect and the identification of nine child abuse victims.

There's nothing new about the police asking for tips - think missing person posters or episodes of Crimewatch. But the Trace an Object crowdsourcing effort launched by Europol in 2017 asks individuals and collectives to find clues for unsolved child abuse investigations by identifying parts of digital images.

It could be a slice of cheese that someone recognises as Belgian, a crumpled shopping bag or a brightly coloured child's duvet cover: it just needs a moment of recognition - human or digital - to fill in the gaps that lead police to a suspect or a victim.

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