He shares a name with a Cornell rape suspect. Strangers started hunting him down.

The messages told him he should “rot in hell” and be thrown in jail.

His friends and family received a barrage of menacing threats.

Strangers found his cellphone number and peppered his phone with abusive texts. His face was plastered across angry videos online. Even TMZ called him.

The messengers had wrongly concluded that the man was one of the seven Chi Phi fraternity members accused of participating in a 2024 gang rape at Cornell University, a case that has commanded public attention since the accuser, known as “Jane Doe,” filed a civil lawsuit last month.

But the man, a graduate student in engineering at the University of Pennsylvania, never attended Cornell — he merely shares a first and last name with one of the accused men. To make matters clear, he recently changed his LinkedIn bio to read, “I do NOT go to Cornell.”

As the Cornell case has fueled public debate, it has inspired a frenzy of online sleuths, who are racing to identify and expose personal information about Jane Doe and the men she has accused, a phenomenon called “doxing.”

Since Jane Doe filed the lawsuit, she has faced death threats and been confronted at her home by armed police after someone made a false report, an action called swatting, according to Thomas Giuffra, her attorney.

In their rush, the digital vigilantes have made errors — falsely identifying a slew of people who are not connected to the case.

At least three other women have been misidentified as Jane Doe on social media, Giuffra said, prompting a wave of videos in which women declare, “I am Jane Doe,” to show solidarity with the accuser and attempt to obscure her identity.

After the home address of a Marine Corps sergeant who shares a name with one of the accused was mistakenly added to court documents, his family received threats, said John Manly, an attorney representing his family.

The error led the New York Supreme Court judge handling the case to seal several court documents Friday and to condemn the harassment as “brash, reckless, and ultimately dangerous internet vigilantism.”

The Penn grad student said he has been worried that online vigilantes might find his home address, adding that “overall, the past few weeks have taken a toll on my mental health.”

The men accused in the Cornell case have not been charged, and The Washington Post is not naming them.

One man who shares a name with one of the accused, and who graduated from Cornell four years before the incident, posted a video showing messages he had received.

“You can’t hide. Your future is over. You’ll get exactly what you deserve, which is prison,” one said. In another video, he read a message from a woman claiming to be a witch who said she placed a hex on him: “Your soul will not find peace for the rest of your life,” she had told him.

Read the full article at The Washington Post.