Fortnite World💎 Cup Solos winner Kyle "Bugha" Giersdo👍rf was on stream when fans overheard him share that he'd been swatted.
One can imagine a sens🔜e of pandemonium as , only to find uniformed, armed officers in his home. Bugha was lucky, as and recognized him.
"What if I just 🍬got popped?" he asks his chat and fellow gamers, Bi♚zzle and Dubs. "Like, Jesus Christ. The internet's f***ing crazy."
Swatting refers to the act of 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 and , are swatting victims.
In a typical swatting incident, law enforcement in uniform drive their vehi🍃cles 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 . , but gave the dispatching unit the fake address that the intended victim h🃏ad 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 search𒊎 reveals dozens of compilation videos online showing streamers being swatted on-stream. Even professional streamers such as are .
It can be terrifying for the victim, and it’s also a serious resource drain on the government♚. 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 p🎀erson'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, addressꦆes and phone numbers and more for over 2000 participants.
Furthe෴r, swatters frequently understand how to make them♑selves virtually untraceable.
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 f🌌un," .
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.
, 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 threat🎐s 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 th൲e🥂 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.