Swatting is when someone calls a swat team to your residence for a bogus reason.

This is a very selective swipe because it's a long article and a lot of y'all hate reading.

http://kotaku.com/meet-a-teenager-who-says-hes-a-swatter-1686128721

A Runescape player was recently swatted while 60,000 people watched. When he tried to record a video about it, he broke down crying. A 19-year-old in Las Vegas was arrested for coordinating a swatting in Illinois. What motivates someone to take this dangerous step? I tracked down a self-professed swatter to find out.

How I got to that point requires a little setup.

One of my first stories at Kotaku was about a couple recounting their terrifying experience of being swatted while their three children were home with them. Swatting, if you don't know, involves a call being made to police about a violent but imaginary crime. That incident shared a common thread with other swattings: the use of someone else's personal information without their permission. To avoid being swatted, you'd want to keep your personal info offline as much as possible. As a follow-up, I researched ways to learn what parts of our lives are already online, and I published a piece outlining how to remove those items from the Internet.

I messaged this self-professed swatter, and he quickly got back back to me. He created a new account on Skype, and we talked for about 90 minutes. What he told me was surprising and revealing about the psychology driving those who spend their time tormenting others on the Internet.

...

So there's a big caveat to all that follows. I can't prove its true. I can't prove that the stories he told me about how he'd deceive people to get personal information are real. I nevertheless believe it's important to try to understand this murkier side of one of the most notorious and dangerous forms of modern harassment. What follows is an attempt to get a more clear picture.

Being able to intimidate someone is really fun, whether someone will admit it or not.

I'd get bored and wanted to see if I could trick X service into giving me Z information by doing Y type of call. It was a game to me. I found it fun. I never really released doxxes. I didn't see the point of it. I didn't care. I found it fun tricking the system into giving me information. I felt all-knowing, which is a feeling that a lot of people crave. I felt like I was something special. Not everyone could do this. And it's true! Not everyone can. You're gonna get someone who's just got a fucking terrible knack for it that can't do it, but I'm definitely not special for being able to.

I can call any ISP in the world, or I can get on chat support with any ISP in the world. We can get the tools they use. That's what you need to do before you call an ISP. You call them, and you say "Hi, my name is Richard, I work out of this region. This is my first day. I wasn't really listening to what my manager had to say. What is the tool to look up modems? Modem activity?" Stuff like that. Most of the time, they'll just give it to you. You ask them for their name and employee ID , just to verify they're an actual employee is what you say. Most of them will believe it. "Oh, it's just this guy's first day. He doesn't know what the fuck he's doing. What's he going to do with my EID?" But then you call and say "Hi, my name is Elizabeth Wallace. My EID is 20657. Can I please get an IP lookup done? My workstation's having issues."

The first person ran around Minecraft servers getting kids on Skype, promising to give them items. Once he got them on Skype, he would dox them, get their parents on the phone, and basically try to trick their parents into sending them money. He was exploiting 8-year-olds for their parents' money. I didn't consider myself the fucking Batman of swat teams, but at the same time, he was getting recognition for it, which also bothered me. What's the police department going to do? No one knew his name at the time. Very few people actually go down. You don't get recognition for exploiting eight-year-olds. I'm sorry. You're not getting that, that's not gonna happen. There's no way. On top of that, you're exploiting eight-year-olds. That's so unfair.

Sure, it's one thing to mess with a teenager girl or a young, adult woman. That's one thing that's kinda fucked up. They're old enough to understand what's going on. They're old enough to understand that they can get past it. But an eight-year-old? Sometimes it was an eight-year-old girl. They're crying. That little kid thinks their life is over. They're done. Their Minecraft account's stolen. He would basically just exploit their parents—exploit them to exploit their parents to get money. It would work.

You have to get an ISP that people don't have methods for. And by methods, I mean what tools they use and what they're used for. People can get methods for it easily. Really easily. But a lot of people don't know how to get methods.

Put a lock on your account and make it so no one can call in about your account—at all. They can't call in, they can't even get your first name, they can't get the first digit of your account number, they can't call in about any issues. Once you have your ISP setup, call those motherfuckers every day until they do it. And if they say they've done it, make them do it again. You call them and say "I want to set up a password on my account and I want to verify my identity with the last four digits of my social security number whenever I call." They have a note section when they pull up the account on their tools that, in big bold letters, "get this fag's social security number." Do that.

On top of that, call your police department. That's pretty simple. If you're a streamer, if you have 500 followers, it doesn't matter. Call your police department and say "Hi, my name is so-and-so. I live at this address. This is my cell phone number. This is my home phone number. This is my email address. I do things on the Internet where it involves me being a public figure. My information might get released." Then, you politely ask them if they know what swatting is. If they say no, you're fucked. But they won't. Everyone knows what it is now.

People think that getting swatted is the end game of the Internet. You're done for. It doesn't matter. As long as you don't have anything to hide, it really doesn't matter. If you have weed, put it under your bed or something. It doesn't end your life. You're fine. Are people gonna tweet at you and say "oh, your door got kicked in?" Yeah. Sure. But, I mean, you're still gonna go on about your day like you would have the day before. Once a month, are you gonna have to take take 30 minutes out of a Saturday night to make sure that your door's not getting kicked in? Sure. But that should be the cost of streaming. That should be the cost of being a YouTuber.

13 year olds can fuck up your night. Don't give a shit about it. Even if you care, pretend not to. That's gonna make you the joke. That's gonna make you someone they can go back to next Friday when they don't have to go to school in the morning. The best thing you can do, even if you're scared shitless—which, honestly, I'd call you a pussy for—but even if you're scared shitless and a SWAT team is going to come to your house, you need to play it off like you don't give a shit. A lot of people are put in this situation where they get tweeted at with "SWAT coming!" And their chat blows up. "You're getting swatted, holy shit!" You need to call the police right then and there, even if the team's already dispatched.

---

Here's how they accomplish this via amazon, paypal, and your ISP:

http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--mQgc2JCO--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/ql0zmbrnjetirfm3waoo.png

Here's another article that provides tips on how to secure yourself against these attacks:

http://kotaku.com/how-to-protect-your-information-from-the-internet-1681793800

---

Let's talk about this because this is a big issue right now.