Instead of bogus pizza deliveries, sending a SWAT team to your door appears to be the hip new griefing trend in online gaming. Earlier this month we told you about a gamer in Eugene, Ore. who answered the doorbell to a police raid, thanks to some douchebag he met in FortressCraft. Now it's happened to someone in Florida.
Local news blames this on "hackers," without explaining why it's necessary to hack another person's Xbox 360 in order to make a prank phone call. In this case, Collier County, Fla. deputies were told someone at a local residence had taken hostages and was suicidal, so they rolled SWAT to the location. It didn't take long to discover this was a giant misunderstanding, but not before the requisite pointing of guns in someone's face.
Short on specifics, what we can deduce is that Hunter Gelinas, 15, had been playing online and evidently got into a pissing match with someone. The other person's revenge was not just in sending the law, heavily armed, to his home. His victim also had computer equipment seized, even though he is not a suspect, as authorities try to trace the griefer, believed to live in Canada.
Again, local TV, in this case WINK of Fort Myers, Fla., can't get out of this without sowing some good ole fear and ignorance. They remind everyone that hackers have easy access to your personal information and even your phone lines. The best course of action is never go online, especially with a games system, because that's entirely reasonable.
God help you if you get your news from local television.
Only on WINK: Hacker Calls in Home Invasion Hoax in Collier County [WINK-TV]