Phishing attacks on the council's email systems

Our email systems have been affected by two phishing attacks in the last few days.

The phishing emails have been sophisticated, using staff contact details and including a link to download documents that look like they are from a legitimate source.

If you have received an email from a council contact (from East Hampshire District Council or Havant Borough Council) that you weren’t expecting, DO NOT CLICK ON IT.

Please either delete the email or contact the member of staff to check whether it is legitimate.

What we are doing about it:

  • We have worked with our IT provider to secure the accounts of the individuals whose email addresses were used to send the phishing emails.
  • We are contacting every known email contact of those individuals to advise them to delete the email if they have received it.
  • We are reporting the incidents to the ICO (Information Commissioner’s Office).
  • We continue to provide staff and councillors with additional advice to reduce the chance of another attack being successful.
  • We have published posts on social media and an alert on our website homepage linking to this information.