The power of anonymous internet users has been highlighted once again, after a woman was tracked down after being caught on CCTV tossing a cat into a rubbish bin.
It took mere hours to identify her – thanks largely to 4Chan.
The CCTV footage shows the woman stopping to pet an affectionate cat named Lola, then picking her up by the scruff of the neck and dropping her in a tall rubbish bin.
Lola's owners, Darryl and Stephanie Mann, say the cat spent 15 hours inside the bin before she was rescued, according to APTN.
The footage was posted on the social networking site Facebook and received a vitriolic response.
Part of the 4Chan collective began an online hunt to find the woman.
Within a few hours she was identified as Mary Bale, 50, of Coventry, England. They discovered where she lives and posted a Google map of the address. They found her Facebook profile and found out where she worked – posting the phone number and name of her boss.
Local police were forced to take her into police protection.
Created by a 15-year-old seven years ago, 4Chan has grown enormously and successfully carried out some of the most high profile collective actions in the history of the internet.
It has been credited with taking over Google trends on a number of occasions, assorted Justin Beiber related pranks, spreading a rumour that Steve Jobs had a heart attack (causing Apple Inc.’s stock to fall suddenly), and triggering an evacuation of New York’s JFK airport.
The site does not require users to register and they are able to delete their posts at any time with no record left behind.
It has 11 million unique browsers and 730 million page impressions each month. The users are mostly male 18- to 25-year-olds who publish 1 million new posts each day.
4Chan’s ability to outwit systems put in place by multi-billion dollar corporations continues to be one of the biggest online conundrums.
It’s also a deterrent to cat abusers world-wide – you will be found and they won’t just toss you into a bin.
3 News