Swatting is an ongoing problem on YouTube and Twitch. Again and again, streamers fall victim to apparent prank calls. However, sometimes completely uninvolved individuals are affected, as the case of the streamer Caitlin “supcaitlin” shows: Unknown individuals sent the police to her grandparents’ house.
What is Swatting? This is a dangerous trend, particularly affecting larger streamers. Some even report being genuinely traumatized.
Viewers notify the police and invent an emergency at the streamer’s address: they claim someone wants to harm themselves or others, there is a hostage situation, or even a bomb threat.
In such serious threats, a special police unit is deployed. These units are called SWAT in English, which gave the practice its name. The “joke” is that completely unsuspecting content creators are surprised by armed responders, and their reactions can be followed live on stream.
In the worst case, however, completely uninvolved individuals are affected.
Viewers had the wrong address
What happened now? As the streamer reported on Twitter on January 18, there was a police operation at her grandparents’ house the night before. Apparently, those responsible believed that Caitlin lives there herself.
How are the grandparents doing? The streamer reassured that her grandparents are doing well. However, the two do not speak English very well, which made them very scared and confused by the operation.
The internet is a very scary place, as Caitlin said.
What can be done about it? Swatting is a crime in both Germany and the USA. However, penalties apply only after damage has occurred. There are not really many options available to prevent swatting.
Content creators are advised to pay special attention to their privacy, to disclose as little information about themselves as possible, and perhaps even hide their IP address using a VPN.
Some streamers proactively notify the police to get on some kind of “anti-swatting list”. This way, the responders are alerted that it could be an unpleasant prank if an emergency call comes in for these addresses.
This is reported by the streamer iamlucid on TikTok. He had enough of putting his entire family at risk when he goes live.
Swatting also in Germany
Although the phenomenon is mainly prevalent in the USA, swatting has long made its way here as well. The notification of other emergency services, such as the fire department, also falls under this term.
Currently, there is also much excitement about one of Germany’s biggest streamers: Bild newspaper reports that an unknown person allegedly terrorized a pensioner with pizza deliveries and fire department deployments for months because he suspected Marcel “MontanaBlack” Eris to be at her address.
On Wednesday, January 20, he is said to have caused a fire department operation at the real MontanaBlack. How this is legally handled has been analyzed by the lawyer Christian Solmecke on YouTube.
Last year, the German streamer Anissa Baddour (25) alias “AnniTheDuck” also had an experience with swatting. However, the fire department deployment caught her not 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 department
