FBI warns of dangerous telephone fraud

Imagine this: you are sitting with your wife and children at home in the USA watching one of a hundred TV channels, most of which are showing some sort of cops and robbers (or worse) programme when you hear what you think is someone trying to get in through your front door. You pass through the kitchen and pick up a knife and edge towards the door. At that moment, armed men burst in, shouting and pointing large guns at you. You don't know what to do - do you try to be brave? Do you just lie down and hope they don't kill you and rape your family? Do you just stand there confused?

Do you even hear them shouting that they are the police, or are you just too dazzled by the noise, the lights they are shining and fixated by the guns?

That's the experience that one Californian man suffered last year after a 19 year old played an appalling prank. He used a box that allowed him to fake the origin of his call. He gave the correct address for the number he faked and then said he had shot and killed someone. An armed police response unit, known as SWAT, descended on the house.

As the FBI put it "Fortunately, the situation didn’t escalate, and no one was injured."

But this is not an isolated incident - and it's so common that someone has given it a stupid name - "swatting."

There have been many calls as the craze grows: this are not simple hoaxes, they are designed to put someone who is entirely innocent in a position where they stand a good chance of being killed.

The stories are often horrible: hostages about to be murdered, bombs about to go off and so on. The FBI says "officers are placed in danger as unsuspecting residents may try to defend themselves." They don't say much about the prospect that the person who is assaulted in this way may be harmed.

It's not for financial gain - Kevin Kolbye of the Dallas office of the FBI says "Individuals did it for the bragging rights and ego, versus any monetary gain."

This is a long way in motivation from the old phone phreaking, which used a similar technology to make calls and have them billed to someone else's number.

And one wonders if that is happening elsewhere. Only this morning, a caller phoned our own office - to a direct line that is used only for international calls saying that he was returning a call from that number that had shown up on his mobile phone display. We are already closed for Chinese New Year and there is only one person left in the office. And yes, I'm writing this. And I know for sure I have not made any outgoing local calls from that phone for two days.

Interesting, huh?