What is swatting?

Table of Contents 4 sections

What is Swatting?

Swatting is a criminal harassment tactic in which a perpetrator makes a fraudulent emergency call, typically to the police or a 911 dispatcher, falsely reporting a severe crime in progress at a victim's address. The reports usually claim situations that demand an immediate armed response, such as a hostage situation, active shooter, or bomb threat. The goal is to trigger the deployment of a Special Weapons and Tactics (SWAT) team or heavily armed police officers to the unsuspecting victim's location.

Swatting poses extreme danger to the targeted individuals, their families, neighbors, and the responding law enforcement officers. Victims face the traumatic experience of having armed officers storm their home, and the potential for fatal outcomes is real. In 2017, a swatting incident in Wichita, Kansas resulted in the death of an innocent man when police shot him after responding to a fabricated hostage report. Swatting also wastes critical emergency response resources that could be needed for genuine emergencies.

How Swatting is Carried Out

Perpetrators typically use techniques to conceal their identity and location when placing the false emergency call. Voice over IP (VoIP) services, caller ID spoofing tools, and relay services for the hearing impaired have all been exploited to make untraceable calls that appear to originate from the victim's location. Some attackers use text-to-speech software to further mask their voice during the call.

Obtaining a victim's personal address is a prerequisite for swatting. Attackers use doxxing techniques to discover this information, searching public records, social media profiles, data breaches, and other online sources. In the gaming and streaming community, where swatting has been particularly prevalent, victims' addresses may be discovered through IP address geolocation, gaming platform information leaks, or social engineering of friends and family members.

Targets and Motivations

Swatting has been most commonly associated with the online gaming and live-streaming communities, where it originated as an extreme form of trolling and harassment. Live streamers are particularly targeted because the perpetrator can watch the police response unfold in real time on the victim's broadcast. However, swatting has expanded beyond gaming to target journalists, politicians, executives, judges, school officials, and other public figures.

Motivations for swatting range from personal grudges and online disputes to retaliation for perceived grievances, intimidation, and the desire for notoriety. In some cases, swatting is used as a tool of extortion or as a distraction to cover other criminal activity. Cybercriminal groups have offered swatting-as-a-service, where individuals can pay to have someone swatted, further lowering the barrier for this dangerous activity.

Legal Consequences and Prevention

Swatting is a serious crime that can result in severe legal penalties. In the United States, federal charges can include making false reports to law enforcement, interstate threats, conspiracy, and if someone is injured or killed, manslaughter or murder charges. Sentences have ranged from years in federal prison to decades in cases where fatalities occurred. Many states have enacted or strengthened specific anti-swatting legislation to address this threat.

Preventing swatting requires both individual and systemic measures. Individuals should protect their personal information by using privacy settings on social media, avoiding sharing their home address online, and using PO boxes or registered agent services where possible. Some law enforcement agencies offer voluntary swatting registries where residents can flag their address as a potential swatting target, prompting a more cautious police response. Enhanced 911 call verification, including callback procedures and cross-referencing caller information, helps dispatchers identify potentially fraudulent emergency reports before deploying armed response teams.