Further information concerning fraudulent emails
Fraudulent emails sent in the name of the police or other authorities have been circulating in recent months. The purported senders include the Federal Department of Justice and Police FDJP, police authorities such as fedpol, cantonal police forces or Europol, the National Cyber Security Centre NCSC and/or individuals such as Federal Councillors Elisabeth Baume-Schneider and Karin Keller-Sutter, fedpol Director Nicoletta della Valle or fedpol Vice Directors. The most important information regarding this situation can be found here.
Senders:
Typically, these fraudulent emails impersonate Federal Councillors Elisabeth Baume-Schneider or Karin Keller-Sutter or fedpol Director Nicoletta della Valle. However, the names of fedpol directorate and management members have also been used: Eva Wildi-Cortés, René Bühler, Yanis Callandret, Stéphane Theimer, Emre Ertan and Simon Spoerri.
The senders sometimes falsify their email address so that the domain name appears to be that of an official government office (for example: bund-erklarung_nrXX@gs-ejpd.admin.ch). Often a fictitious Gmail address is used, for example chfedpolministere@gmail.com, service.eu.fedpol@gmail.com, bundeskriminalamt.bka.de@gmail.com, fedpolswitzerland.ch@gmail.com.
Contents:
In most of these emails, the sender threatens to initiate criminal proceedings against the recipient for visiting websites containing child pornography. The senders demand to be contacted and usually send Word documents or PDFs as attachments.
What to do:
- Do not open the attachments.
- Do not reply to the email.
- Report the email to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC).
- To prevent further emails, you can mark the sender as spam and block it.
General information on cyberthreats is also available on the National Cyber Security Centre NCSC website.
Informations about fake threatening emails from authorities are available on the website of the National Cyber Security Centre.
Last modification 21.02.2023
