Police continue to respond to threat emails

The emails being opened this morning follow more than 70 anonymous bomb threat emails that were sent to schools, hospitals, courthouses and places of worship in late November. Photo: SunLive/File.

Police are continuing to respond to multiple “concerning” emails throughout New Zealand, police have confirmed.

"While many of the emails were opened in the weekend by organisations that were targeted, many other organisations are only just opening the email this morning," says a police spokesperson.

Police say many organisations reported the emails to Police on Sunday, resulting in Police issuing a statement.

The emails received on Sunday are similar to more than 70 anonymous bomb threat emails that were sent to schools, hospitals, courthouses and places of worship in late November.

Up to 22 schools around Auckland were closed and the High Court evacuated after they were sent bomb threat emails on Friday, November 24.

It came after 15 “concerning” emails were sent to schools and hospitals on Thursday, November 23.

Police are working to establish the origin of the emails, and ask any organisations that receive them to report them.

While any threats received will be treated with “appropriate caution”, the police spokesperson said they, “have not established any actual threat at this time”.

"We ask that organisations who receive the emails continue to report them to Police, to assist in our ongoing enquiries to identify the origin of the emails."

Any threat received will be treated with the appropriate caution however, Police have not established any actual threat at this time.

Police are working with those impacted by the threats, and, “each organisation may respond differently, according to their individual circumstances are the information available to them”.

"Police acknowledge how unsettling these emails are for all concerned and thank all involved for their cooperation," says a Police spokesperson.

"Police will not be disclosing the names of individual organisations that received emails."

1 comment

They are intended...

Posted on 05-12-2023 16:26 | By morepork

... to disrupt our society and raise anxiety. The actual threat, is a very low risk. Unfortunately, they still have to be taken seriously and the perpetrators know that. It is very difficult from a tech point of view to suppress this kind of attack. Thousands of bots can be involved, with new ones created every day on often unsuspecting users. However, ways to deal with it are being developed, and we should see a dropping off of this kind of attack in the coming year. Meanwhile, we stay calm and run the procedures and processes we need to, to ensure there is no REAL risk.


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