Swatting is an ongoing problem on YouTube and Twitch. Again and again, streamers fall victim to the supposed prank calls. Sometimes, however, it also affects completely bystanders, as the case of the streamer Caitlin “supcaitlin” shows: Unknown people sent the police to their grandparents.
What is swatting? This is a dangerous trend that affects larger streamers in particular. Some even report being downright traumatized.
Viewers call the police and invent an emergency at the streamer’s address: it says that someone wants to do something to themselves or others, that there is a hostage situation or even a bomb threat.
In the event of such serious threats, a special police unit is called out. These units are called SWAT in English, giving the practice its name. The “joke” is that the completely unsuspecting content creators are surprised by armed forces and their reaction can be followed live in the stream.
In the worst case, however, it hits completely uninvolved people.
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Viewers had the wrong address
What happened now? As the streamer reported on Twitter on January 18, there had been a police operation at her grandparents’ house the night before. Apparently those responsible had assumed that Caitlin herself lived there.
How are the grandparents? The streamer gave the all-clear that her grandparents are fine. However, the two do not speak English very well, which is why they are very scared and confused by the assignment.
The internet is a very scary place, Caitlin said.
What can you do about it? Swatting is a criminal offense in both Germany and the United States. But the penalties only come into effect when the damage has already occurred. There really aren’t many ways to prevent swatting.
Content creators are encouraged to be extra vigilant about their privacy, disclosing as little information about themselves as possible, and maybe even using VPN to hide their IP address.
Some streamers are becoming proactive and calling the police themselves to be put on a sort of “anti-swatting” list. The emergency services are warned that it could be a nasty joke if an emergency call is received for these addresses.
The streamer iamlucid reports on this on TikTok. He’s had enough of endangering his entire family when he goes live.
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Swatting also in Germany
Although the phenomenon is particularly widespread in the USA, swatting has long since found its way into Germany. The communication of other emergency services, such as the fire brigade, also falls under this term.
So there is currently a lot of excitement about one of the largest streamers in Germany: the Bild newspaper reports that an unknown person is said to have terrorized a pensioner with pizza deliveries and fire brigade operations for months because he suspected Marcel “MontanaBlack” Eris at her address .
On Wednesday, January 20th, he is said to have triggered a fire brigade operation at the real MontanaBlack. The lawyer Christian Solmecke has worked up what the whole thing looks like from a legal point of view on YouTube.
The German streamer Anissa Baddour (25) aka “AnniTheDuck” also had to experience swatting last year. However, the fire brigade did not catch her at home, but in a pizzeria where she was holding a very special cooking stream.
German streamer bakes pizza on Twitch, viewers notify the fire brigade