Bringing human trafficking to an end is a daunting task to say the least.
But thanks to a new app called TraffickCam, hotel guests can help authorities come one step closer.
The app allows users to take pictures of their hotel room and submit them so they can be matched against the national database used by police.
It's really that simple.
"You just enter your hotel room, and your room number. You take four pictures, and you submit them to the website," TraffickCam developer Abby Stylianou told Fox2Now.com. "And then those become part of the pipeline that law enforcement can use to track down where the victims are being trafficked."
Explaining the app at a Human Trafficking Town Hall earlier this week, Stylianou said authorities can use the photos submitted by guests to see if they match any of the photos taken of victims. This way travelers can help police identify where victims may have been or where they may indeed be located.
"The algorithm that is being run is actually matching data points in the clean photos that the public is uploading and comparing it to photos that are found online," co-creator Molly Hackett told WTSP.com.
Already the app has generated more than 1.5 million photos of hotels from around the world.
So far, the app has an 85 percent rate of success at returning the correct location to investigators within the first 20 hotel options, per WTSP.com.
If you're wary of downloading the app, keep in mind that it's free and does not retain any of the personal information pertaining to your hotel stay.
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