Fraudulent e-mails on behalf of alleged authorities

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, Europol, or the Konferenz der kantonalen Polizeikommandantinnen und -kommandanten der Schweiz (KKPKS). In some cases, the e-mails claim to come from Federal Councillors or the fedpol directorate.

The senders sometimes falsify their email address so that the domain name appears to be that of an official government office (for example: [e-mail]). Often a fictitious Gmail address is used, for example [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail], [e-mail].

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.

Links

• Fake threatening emails from authorities
  (National Cyber Security Centre NCSC)
• Calls in the name of fake authorities (police, duty)
  (National Cyber Security Centre NCSC)
• Web form for reports to the NCSC

Last modification 04.03.2025