UC News

The Washington Post: Marjorie Taylor Greene isn’t the only politician to be a swatting target

UC cybersecurity expert: It is difficult to tell which 911 calls are real and which are fake

headshot of Angela Koenig By Angela Koenig 513-558-4625
2 minute read January 3, 2024

According to an article in The Washington Post, the number of swatting episodes went from about 400 in 2011 to more than 1,000 in 2019, with an estimated total of 20,000 over the past two decades.

“Swatting” is the act of calling law enforcement on an innocent person with a false claim of criminal activity. 

University of Cincinnati security expert Gregory Winger told the publication that these fake calls take resources away from law enforcement assisting in true criminal activity and “weaponize” the police against the innocent victims. 

The calls are usually placed from a cloaked phone number and relay that the criminal activity includes a life-threatening situation such as someone being held with a lethal weapon, thus requiring a high level of police response.

The victims of swatting are usually high-profile people such as celebrities and politicians. Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has been swatted almost a dozen times; the last time on Christmas Eve, 2023.  

“People learn of those threats, and it spreads,” says Winger, an assistant professor at UC’s School of International and Public Affairs, adding that both real and fake calls are treated the same because, as yet, it’s very difficult to tell a real call from a fake call.

Read the article 

Featured image at top of SWAT team outside a threat location. Photo/iStock/Zeferli 

Impact Lives Here

The University of Cincinnati is leading public urban universities into a new era of innovation and impact. Our faculty, staff and students are saving lives, changing outcomes and bending the future in our city's direction. Next Lives Here. 

Tags

Related Stories

7814 Results
2

USA TODAY: Fact check: Identical injured dog posts are a viral scam

October 21, 2022

UC social media expert cited in USA Today explains how social media posts can be replicated to see who might be vulnerable to sad stories such as a dog getting hit by a car. Use caution and verify posts through outside sources, says Jeffery Blevins, professor and head of UC's Department of Journalism.

6

NPR: Twitter replaces its bird logo with an X

July 25, 2023

UC's Jeffrey Blevins featured as an expert in an NPR article on Elon Musk's rebranding of Twitter to "X". Blevins, who holds faculty positions in both the Department of Journalism and School of Public and International Affairs, is a leading scholar in U.S. telecommunication law and policy, and critical political economy theory and is the co-author of “Social Media, Social Justice and the Political Economy of Online Networks.”

7

The New York Times: Third Black-owned company emerges as suitor for BET

March 14, 2023

An overall decline in television viewership can be attributed to new technologies such as streaming services, but Black Entertainment Television has been feeling the decline more pointedly after legislation from the 1990s, UC's Jeffrey Blevins, a professor of journalism, tells The New York Times.

8

What you post on social media matters to employers

February 15, 2023

What you post on social media can be in conflict with your employers standards, says UC social media expert Jeffrey Blevins. More and more often people are getting dinged, or worse, for posts that put their employers in a bad light. Blevins suggests a social media review/edit of content and more thought put into posts.

9

WVXU: What is pink-slime journalism?

August 24, 2023

WVXU interview with UC's Jeffrey Blevins and other experts on the topic of "pink-slime" journalism (media outlets pretending to be something that they are not). In the interview, experts provide tips on identifying and avoiding these outlets. One example is "The Buckeye Journal" which had Cincinnatian's thinking it was a community paper, when it is actually a partisan funded organization.