Have you ever been a victim of ’swatting’?  If your saying to yourself that you are not sure, then you have not been a victim (fortunately).  Swatting is the prank where people make 911 calls that look like they come from your location and call in an emergency where the SWAT team gets involved.  This is all done through VoIP and social engineering tactics.  Why people think it is funny to absolutely terrify people like this is probably something I will never grasp; fortunately there are harsh penalties for people who are caught doing this.

A California family that found their apartment surrounded by more than a dozen heavily SWAT armed officers are among the latest victims of swatting, a crime designed to elicit an emergency response by reporting a bogus 911 call.

Officers from the Salinas Police Department rushed to the apartment last Wednesday after receiving a report from someone claiming to be a 15-year-old boy saying three men wielding AK-47 assault weapons were trying to break into his apartment. The caller said he was hiding in a closet to elude the gunmen.

After police evacuated a mother and daughter from the apartment, they discovered another resident, a 15-year-old boy, had been holding an online chat with a person believed to be connected to the dangerous prank. The online acquaintance, who said he was located in Chicago, asked the boy if he heard any sirens approaching around the same time the police were arriving.[more]

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