Swatting refers to a harassment technique most often perpetrated by members of the online gaming community. Swatting entails generating an emergency law enforcement response against a target victim under false pretenses. Swatters do this by making phone calls to emergency lines like 911 and falsely reporting a violent emergency situation, such as a shooting, bomb threat, or hostage situation.
Swatters often consider what they are doing to be a prank, but it can come with serious consequences. Swatting occupies law enforcement response teams, making them unavailable to respond to real emergencies. There have even been swatting incidents where law enforcement officers were shot, and in one case the victim of the swatting was shot dead by law enforcement.
In recent years, the US has tried to prevent swatters by imposing serious penalties for the perpetrators, but swatting continues to be an issue. Swatting is often hard for law enforcement to address since many swatters use sophisticated techniques to hide their identity. Swatters disguise themselves using techniques like caller ID spoofing, where they utilize software to make it appear as though they are a local caller when they could be anywhere in the world.
While everyone should be careful to maintain their online privacy, online gamers should take extra care to ensure they won’t be victims of swatting. Gamers should avoid revealing information about their identity or location on in-game chat channels or gaming forums. They should also avoid using screen names that would make it easy for strangers to identify them. Gamers can take further precautions and hide their IP address using a service like a VPN, this will ensure that a potential swatter won’t be able to locate them based on their IP address.
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Additional Readings:
Man who Ordered Deadly Swatting Goes to Jail for 15 Months
Fake 9-1-1 Calls have Real Deadly Consequences (FBI)
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