A recent road rage incident in the southwestern city Chengdu, where video captured a woman being beaten up by a man angered by her reckless driving, has fomented a vindictive reaction in cyberspace.

The woman, identified only by the surname Lu in media reports, had her ID card number, family photos and personal information, hotel visits and even unverified records of past driving offenses exposed on the Internet within days.

The story posted online the next day said the woman had cut in front of the man’s car several times. The near collisions scared the man’s wife and son in the car, so he took off after the woman and eventually forced her to stop. The video showed him dragging her from her car and punching her.

People online claiming to be her neighbors or classmates said she had always been a bully and blamed her for the altercation.

Lu, 28, is still in hospital suffering from concussion, bone fractures and severe bruising. She appealed for an end to the online attack and apologized for the traffic fracas in a letter published on Monday in Southern Metropolis Daily.

“I am caught in a whirlpool of public criticism and my life is badly affected,” she said in the letter. “I have examined my actions and drawn lessons from them. I am sorry for being reckless in my driving. Wrong is wrong. There is no excuse.”

Online social platforms are often the springboards for vitriolic public reaction when videos of misdeeds go viral. Netizens track down perpetrators and try to shame them publicly. In China it’s called renrou sousuo, which means “human flesh search,” or more broadly as “Internet violence.”

The practice has been condemned by many because it’s rough justice meted out anonymously through massive collaboration on social networking sites. Once information is posted, no matter whether it is correct or not, it spreads to a wide audience.

“Human flesh search is a double-edged sword,” said Zhu Wei, associate professor from China University of Political Science and Law in Beijing. “If used properly, it can expose government corruption, science fraud or even the identity of criminals at large. However, used wrongly, a cyber manhunt can be an infringement of personal freedom.”

Tragedies caused by human flesh searches are not hard to find.

In 2013, a teenage girl in Guangdong Province, suspected of shoplifting in a store, drowned herself after she was the target of such a manhunt and her name, school and family address were revealed online. The store owner had posted surveillance video of the incident on the Weibo microblog.

In 2007, a woman jumped off a building to her death after her diary revealing her husband’s affair with another woman was posted online by one of her friends. Netizens found the family and work addresses of the husband, the other woman and the man’s parents, using entries in the diary. Some people painted profanities on the wall of the man’s home.

The husband later sued three social forums in what was China’s first case of a cyber manhunt brought before a court. The forums had to pay the man 8,000 yuan (US$1,289) in compensation.

Last June, a video taken on Shanghai Metro Line 9, purportedly showing a man sexually harassing a female passenger, was posted on the Internet. Soon after, personal information of the man, his wife and daughter went viral. The man finally was forced to quit his job and move elsewhere.

Human flesh searches go beyond exposing man’s inhumanity to man. Mistreatment of animals has also aroused cyber-vigilantes.

On Monday, a father in the northwest city of Urumqi in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region became a “manhunt” target after he beat up a stray dog that scared his son. Animal rights campaigners sought out the father’s mobile phone number, ID number and company address, and posted them on Weibo, WeChat and QQ forums.

Within one day, the man received more than 2,000 profane messages and over 3,000 anonymous phone calls. About 30 animal lovers went to the man’s neighborhood to express their outrage, holding banners and distributing leaflets to locals.

The man finally met the dog lovers and apologized to them. He also agreed to pay over 10,000 yuan to treat the injured dog.

So what does the public think about all this?

China National Radio conducted an online survey about cyberspace manhunts, revealing that 70 percent of respondents didn’t support cyber-zealots taking the law into their own hands.

“Netizens are hurting people in the name of justice,” said Xie Shi, a participant in the survey.

“No one, including law enforcement, has the right to expose such information on a suspected wrongdoer,” said Xiao Qi, another participant.

However, about 10 percent of those polled supported the idea of giving “bad people” their just desserts.

“Only by exposing their ugly behavior to the public will they learn a lesson,” said a netizen calling himself “a swimming fish.”

About 20 percent of respondents took a more neutral stance.

A netizen calling himself “Brother Shandong” said information revealed online should speak only to an incident itself and not expose extraneous dirt.

“Take the Chengdu road rage event, for example,” he said. “I think it is right to expose the woman’s record of past driving offenses, but posting information about her hotel check-ins went too far.”

Shanghai sociologist Gu Xiaoming told Shanghai Daily that this latest incident should make people take a hard look at the boundaries of free speech and personal privacy in cyberspace.

“I’m comfortable with Internet violation, but not Internet violence,” Gu said. “Those who find bad behavior detestable should not be engaging in another form of it online.”

China has no specific laws on cyberspace manhunts.

However, last year the nation’s Supreme People’s Court issued a decree suggesting that the judicial system would support people whose personal information, including health records, criminal pasts and family addresses, is exposed on Internet platforms, causing grievance to those involved.

Lawyer Jin Song, who practices with Shanghai Tianyi Law Firm, said cyber-hunts violate personal privacy.

“But it will be very difficult for victims to win judicial redress in legal actions,” Jin said, noting that plaintiffs have to determine the identities of their attackers and prove they used specific IP addresses in their condemnations.

“In most cases, these things are hard to find because the human flesh search is often anonymous and conducted by dozens of netizens,” Jin said.

Only 20 percent of victims of Internet manhunts have sought legal redress since 2007. Most victims end up being forced to issue open apology letters to try to stop the attacks.

“Another solution is to sue the forums or websites to force them to delete posts that reveal personal information, but by that time, most of the damage is already done,” the lawyer said.