Fortnite World Cup Solos winner Kyle “Bugha” Giersdorf was on stream when fans overheard him share that he’d been swatted.
One can imagine a sense of pandemonium as the Sentinels pro left his computer abruptly to address the situation, only to find uniformed, armed officers in his home. Bugha was lucky, as he later shared that one of the officers lived in his neighborhood and recognized him.
“What if I just got popped?” he asks his chat and fellow gamers, Bizzle and Dubs. “Like, Jesus Christ. The internet’s f***ing crazy.”
Swatting refers to the act of falsely reporting a serious crime to elicit a response from law enforcement and is frequently conducted as a form or harassment or retaliation. The earliest forms involved calling in fake 911 calls as a type of revenge or out of pure anger, but today, swatters go to deep lengths to ensure that the government perceives these as serious threats against humanity. Hundreds of people, including celebrities such as the Kardashians and Ashton Kutcher, are swatting victims.
In a typical swatting incident, law enforcement in uniform drive their vehicles to a person’s home, then approach it cautiously, weapons in hand. They’ll search for a threat of anything that signals danger, often with the use of force. It’s at the very least, uncomfortable for the victim, and at the worst, can claim an innocent person’s life.
In 2017, a 28-year-old man named Andrew Finch was killed after he became the unintended victim of a swatting incident. A Call of Duty gamer frustrated over a small wager allegedly placed the call, but gave the dispatching unit the fake address that the intended victim had falsely provided as his own. Officers killed the innocent man on scene.
In gaming circles, swatting is a widely-known form of harassment. A quick Google search reveals dozens of compilation videos online showing streamers being swatted on-stream. Even professional streamers such as Summit1g are DrLupo victims swatting incidents.
It can be terrifying for the victim, and it’s also a serious resource drain on the government. It can cost tens of thousands of dollars to investigate a false report. Yet law enforcement must continue these investigations should any single incident prove to be real.
Pair that will the relative anonymity of reporting techniques such as caller ID spoofing and social engineering, and it’s possible to swat anyone as long as the swatter has their address or IP address (which can be used to triangulate a person’s physical location).
Security measures, which might include things like two-factor authentication on all accounts and maintenance of private IP addresses, are helpful, but aren’t a catch-all. Just because a gamer’s address isn’t publicly available, it doesn’t prevent a family member from having their information out there. There’s also the possibility of leaks such as the recent one from E3, which shared the names, addresses and phone numbers and more for over 2000 participants.
Further, swatters frequently understand how to make themselves virtually untraceable. As government technology designed to prevent swatting gets better, so too do would-be swatters’ means to circumvent being tracked.
While swatting against gamers in general is problematic, the incentives driving swatters who target streamers seems often to tie back to some kind of twisted sense of victory in having usurped the audience’s attention for a brief moment in time.
“Being able to intimidate someone is really fun,” a self-proclaimed swatter told a Kotaku reporter in 2015.
It’s tricky to figure out how to navigate these situations. For starters, streamers should take precautions to prevent their information from leaking online. It’s essential to take extra security measures, including locking accounts with internet service providers so people can’t fake their identities in order to get information. They should also prepare local enforcement ahead of time to let them know that they’re streamers and therefore public figures who can be targets for swatters.
Swatters frequently face stiff penalties including fines and prison time, but that’s contingent upon whether they’re caught. Therefore, it’s also necessary for the government to crack down on methods that identify fake swatting incidents before they happen, such as by investigating online harassments and threats to swat others as they occur.
There’s no easy way to mitigate the risk of streamer swatting except to continue to show that it’s unacceptable, thereby discouraging the behavior. Those who swat and those who actively encourage such activities should be reprimanded both under the law and by their peers. But the impetus is also on law enforcement to find better ways to protect potential victims of these false threats.
NEXT: Man Sentenced To 20 Years For Fatal COD Swatting Hoax
