A paedophile has been jailed for 11 months after a court heard he hid his identity while using Google and YouTube to find indecent images of children as young as two.
Vincent Shannon, 48, of Broughty Ferry, admitted accessing paedophile websites more than 8,000 times, Dundee Sheriff Court was told.
Shannon made 29 indecent videos, two of them at the highest category, lasting for a total of more than three hours.
He also made 1,050 still images, 110 of them category A.
Fiscal depute Charmaine Gilmartin told the court that police acting on intelligence went to his then address in St Dennis Terrace on August 1 2017.
Mrs Gilmartin said his laptop computer had been found to contain file sharing software.
Videos of children engaged in sexual activity had been recovered.
She added: “A TOR browser has also been installed on the device to provide online anonymity. Analysis of the internet history shows the user accessing a Russian website which can be used to host and share indecent images of children had been accessed more than 8,000 times between February 6 2016 and July 31 2017.
“Two hundred indecent images of children have been recovered on the device, all containing the website name, having been created between April 15 2017 and May 18 2017.
“The user has utilised Google to search for images of abuse since January 29 2016 and YouTube since February 7 2016.”
Shannon, of Lawrence Street, admitted taking or permitting to be taken or making indecent photographs of children between January 12 2016 and August 1 2017, at St Dennis Terrace.
Defence solicitor Ross Donnelly said: “He has now, far too late, come to realise the very harrowing nature of what is behind the images he is looking at on these websites.”
Sheriff Alastair Carmichael jailed Shannon and placed him on the sex offenders register for 10 years.
He added: “I’ve come to the conclusion that due to the nature and number of images, the number of times these sites were accessed, the persistent nature of the conduct and your previous convictions there’s no alternative to a custodial sentence.”
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