…Is the Department of Homeland Security Worried About Gamers?

On Thursday afternoon, the official account for Department of Homeland Security cybersecurity team tweeted this:

Discuss cyberbullying, online reputation & CybersecurityOctober 15, 2015

There's no way DHS is worried about online abuse in video games, right? Right?

It looks like this is the one and only time @cyber has ever tweeted using the hashtag #gaming, or about gamers in general.

The link in the tweet goes out to the Stop.Think.Connect campaign, which is "aimed at increasing the understanding of cyber threats and empowering the American public to be safer and more secure online." The campaign is about a year old, but the materials are still… interesting. The site has posters and PSA videos, many of them aimed at children.

There's a handful listed with "GAME OVER" in the title, featuring children menaced by various cyber threats. It is unclear whether the Department of Homeland Security views oversaturation and dramatic cyan filters as cyber threats.

None of these videos have anything to do with gamers—although one does warn against credit card fraud and identity theft through online games—so what on Earth is that DHS tweet even supposed to mean? At least one three letter agency is looking into the intersection of harassment and video games, but I don't know whether DHS is.

I asked DHS to clarify the meaning behind the tweet, but the agency would not talk on the record about it specifically. A spokesperson instead noted, "As you're well aware, it is National Cybersecurity Awareness month."

Anyways, here's a video of children rapping about cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber cyber.