What is Swatting?

Imagine being out with your family when you get a text from the police that your house is surrounded and if you don’t call immediately they will break down your front door.

Unless your day-to-day life is filled with action-movie type moments like this, it would probably freak you out. It certainly did for Dan.

This is exactly what happened to him — and not just once. For several months, this became a regular occurrence. He and his family have been the victims of swatting.

What is a Swatting Call?

Swatting is when a person (or group of people) calls 911 to intentionally draw police or a SWAT team to respond to a location for a falsified emergency. 

Perpetrators typically obtain someone’s personal information online, such as a home address from public land management records. They then use caller ID spoofing to anonymously call emergency services and pretend there is an immediate threat, such as a hostage situation, to draw law enforcement officers to the location.

Swatting can be motivated by hate or bias, as a scare tactic, as a threat, for intimidation purposes, or simply as a joke for entertainment. Swatting attacks have recently become more prevalent in the online gaming community.

That’s where it started with Dan’s family: “When my son asked me about Discord, I was definitely hesitant because I’d heard bad things about it. I did some research and determined eventually that it would be okay to let him use it with parental controls. We stayed in close communication and he knew to come to me if there were ever any scenarios that he felt were uncomfortable.”

It didn’t take long for his son to do just that when he began to receive serious threats from a number of Discord users.

“He started getting direct messages threatening him — cyberbullying, basically — telling him he needed to share information on four different YouTubers that he knows or else they were gonna “swat” his house. They were giving him threats, like they would kill his whole family.”

Things escalated a step further when the group moved from threats in Discord to doxing.

“They took all of our information they could find online and put it out on this website for anybody to go download. You could see my name, my phone number, all my social channels, my address, everything. It was pretty scary.”

Fortunately, Dan had done the work to establish open and trusted communication with his son — a critical way to keep kids safe online — because things could have gone far worse.

“He called me and he explained what was going on. I helped him calm down and told him not to have any more interaction with these people, to stop the conversation. I made sure he removed the Discord app from his phone, deleted his account and the server. He ended up getting off the app completely.”

Dan called his local police department to report the incident and get it on record, just in case. And it was good that he did.

The very next evening he started getting phone calls from unknown numbers, over and over. Dan and his family were out together so he dismissed the calls as typical spam. Then he got a text message:

“The text said it was the police and they were outside our home and wanted to know if we were okay, if we were inside. The only reason I think they did that was because I had filed the report ahead of time and they had it on record that this was a potential risk, otherwise they probably would have just stormed the house and found a way to get in.”

Dan and his family hurried home: “All my kids were stressed and crying the whole way home, just distraught. They didn’t know what was going on and what this meant and if it was a real threat. The police were able to calm them down and help them understand but they still had to sweep the house just to make sure, because by law, they have to.”

Sadly, this wasn’t a one-time trauma for Dan and his family. The swatting calls persisted for months, leaving Dan’s family never knowing when they might be pulled from their home by police.

Consequences of Swatting

While some prank callers see swatting attacks as a joke, the consequences of swatting are far from funny.

Swatting reports are on the rise nationally, making it a large issue for local and federal police whose resources are diverted from real crimes to attend to swatting calls. For the victims of swat incidents like Dan’s family, the emotional rollercoaster is steep and can last long after the calls finally stop.

“It happened a few times each week. We would get the police called at random times and they would have to come over. At one point while I was at work the police showed up and had my wife and kids come out with their hands up, just as protocol, because they didn’t know if there was a real threat at the house. Of course, it was pretty traumatic for the kids. At another point they were questioning some of our neighbors.”

While Dan acknowledges that there are worse problems out there, clearly this became a very real problem for him, his family, and the community.

“It got to the point that every night when I’d get in bed if I got a call that I didn’t recognize, I’d get kind of nervous that maybe it was going to happen again, that the police would show up and pull us all out of bed. It’s obviously pulling away from city resources and creating a lot of stress for us. There was definitely a lot of emotional stress and turmoil because of it.”

Thankfully, the calls have recently stopped. Dan gives credit to working with a detective from the local police department to catch the people swatting him.

“I’ve given him everything I could as far as screenshots and user IDs. The police have told me that Discord is one of the worst apps out there because there are so many bad actors on there that hide behind usernames and masked IP addresses. They think they can get away with a lot when they do these things. And a lot of times they can. It’s hard to track them.”

Getting perpetrators’ Discord user IDs helps. With those IDs, law enforcement can subpoena Discord (and Google, in Dan’s case, because they were calling from a Google Voice phone number). 

They (Discord and Google) have to notify users if law enforcement is trying to get their information and Dan believes this has scared the swatters off and led to the calls stopping. But beyond that, it’s tough to catch and punish the perpetrators.

“The detective was able to chase one of them down to Russia and another one to New York.”

Nothing much can be done to hold someone in Russia accountable for a crime like this. Moving across state lines also complicates things but there is potential for federal involvement. In Dan’s case, the local detective is working to get the FBI involved.

What is the Punishment for Swatting?

Swatting is a criminal offense. There is no such thing as a harmless swatting call. While online perpetrators can often be hard to track down, and even harder to prosecute, many swatters face charges for their falsified emergency calls. 

One swatter is facing up to 20 years in prison after his swatting call caused police to shoot and kill an innocent man.

For Dan, he just hopes the calls are done for good. “At the very least, the goal is to get these people to stop and to help them understand and have a degree of punishment so they know that they can’t keep doing these types of things and harassing people.”

Dan is doing his part to help. He hopes by sharing this story it prevents another family from going through what they have. 

“I hope our story helps people understand that it’s a real thing, it’s a real threat. Swatting is no joke. Hopefully people will be able to prevent this from happening with their kids. 

The biggest fear I have is this happens to a kid who doesn’t feel comfortable talking to their parents about it, and they keep engaging with the person to a point that they really do give up information on their friends or their family or other people because they felt threatened, and then it could have worse consequences down that path.”

Dan’s story is not an isolated event. Swatting can happen to everyday people like Dan’s son, or be used against influencers, minority groups, political figures, or celebrities. For example, Tom Cruise, Tyler Barriss, and Miley Cyrus have all been victims of swatting.

Swatting is even on the rise in schools, where people make hoax calls about active school shooters.

Most swatting stories aren’t publicized, but a number of incidents have made headlines recently, including:

• A 12-year-old boy who is being prosecuted as a minor after he made hoax emergency calls to send police to Ashton Kutcher and Justin Beiber’s homes. 
• Threats to shoot up a school in Saginaw Township, Michigan ended up being one of 500 hoax calls believed to be part of a string of swatting incidents.
• A gamer pled guilty to manslaughter after a man died while being swatted following their fight on the game Call of Duty.
• Four political figures in Missouri, Maine, Georgia, and Virginia were swatted as the presidential race heated up in 2024.

How to Prevent Swatting?

If you’re like me, hearing Dan’s story probably leaves you wondering how you can avoid this for your family. It’s easy to reassure myself by believing that something like this could never happen to me. But the truth is, it can.

Dan did some research before saying yes to Discord and used all available parental controls. Dan’s son stopped engaging with the perpetrators and came to his parents with the problem immediately. In other words, Dan’s family did the right things. This helped them prevent far more severe consequences. But they still suffered.

This is not to say we need to panic and raise our kids in isolation from the internet (but don’t think I haven’t considered it a time or two). But ignoring the dangers to gain a false security actually leaves my children more susceptible. 

In addition to the precautions Dan took, you might consider teaching your children how to conduct themselves online (and specifically on video games), what to do if they ever feel threatened or make a mistake online, and letting them practice those skills slowly, one tech step at a time. 

And if you’re not sure your child is ready for a specific game, app, or device, err on the side of caution. Your kids will beg. They’ll tell you they’re the only one of their friends not using it. That pressure is hard to resist. Nobody wants their kid to be the outsider. But trust your instincts because giving your child access to these platforms is also giving everyone on that platform access to your child.

If you’re not sure they’re ready, wait. If you’ve already given them access and regret it, there is still hope.

The great news is there are so many great resources today for parents. Kid-safe devices are a great starting point with options to grow with your teen as they practice these ever important tech skills.

For more support raising kids in today’s technology world, chocolate always helps. You can also subscribe to Gabb Now below to get the latest news and inspiration in your inbox, which is a healthier option (but not as tasty). 

What do you think?

Do you still have questions about swatting that we didn’t cover above? Any tips for other parents on how to give kids the good of the online world without exposing them to the bad? Chat with us in the comments.