To wonder how people can be so utterly deluded and stupid re child sex offenders?

[LoverOfCake]

Piece on Jeremy Vine earlier about a guide dog owner who has been convicted of downloading child images. Many people called in to say the dog should be removed, etc etc etc. And then this woman called in to say that people need to not be so quick to jump to conclusions, how things are so often not what they seem, and how she has a friend who has just been convicted of the same thing and he is completely innocent, has no idea how the images got on to his computer but he obviously didn't download and don't people realise that you can just inadvertently end up with images being downloaded in this way? Oh but he's had to plead guilty because he can't afford to defend himself.

Honestly I wanted to slap her.

How do people get drawn in like this? How?

Agree with HerOtherHalf - that was a case that made the news because its unique, it’s in no way representative of your average indecent images case. People need to stop perpetuating crappy harmful myths.

And no one is on the SOR for life for pissing in public. Or touching someone’s knee.

"people who think you can't download something by accident are ignorant about how technology works."

I'm not sure you have a strong basis for claiming those who disagree with you are ignorant:

"If you dig around the Windows directory you will find evidence of sites you visited weeks or months ago"

The 'windows directory' is just an old name for the folders on your computer. Images are indeed automatically downloaded to your browser's (hidden) cache folder, but it only has a certain size. You would only have images of abuse if you've been looking at them fairly recently. Most people 'accidentally' on one of these sites would not click on further links and get multiple images.

"A pop-up ad, a hacked web page that bounces you somewhere else, a virus, some sicko emailing a child abuse image to a random stranger"

I've never heard of malware, adverts or phishing attacks that install images of abuse- what would the motivation be? I can only imagine this being a specialist hack to target and discredit an individual- pretty rare stuff.

"anyone could be a victim of these things"
As PPs have said- child abusers go to great lengths to hide. I've never read of an abuse site that doesn't require some kind of specialist software like TOR to access. I have read of a case where someone had a small number of images and has not been prosecuted- just bailed and monitored. Presumably they gave the 'accidental' defence and were considered lower risk.

TL;DR: It's theoretically possible to receive images of child abuse by mistake, but vanishingly unlikely. I think it's safe to assume anyone convicted is a paedophile.