Be wary of who you provoke on Xbox Live, because they’re not all greasy, socially maladjusted scumbags. Some of them are greasy, socially maladjusted scumbags who will find your home address and send a SWAT team to raid it.
Fourteen police officers were sent to a home in Eugene after receiving information that a man had shot his father and was about to shoot himself. Investigators have deduced that the bogus caller obtained personal details and made the call after an argument over Xbox Live.
According to the victim of the prank, the argument was over some content he had created in FortressCraft and refused to share: “He tried to twist my arm over something relatively small in the game.”
This prank has become known as “Swatting” and it’s scary to think that it’s popular enough to have its own name. Wasting police time is, of course, a terrific way to get back at someone over a videogame.
911 hoax behind SWAT response [The Register Guard]
