Government 'holds hands up' after warning its own emails were phishing scams

Tuesday, 14 October 2025 18:30

The States of Guernsey has apologised after an email gaffe in which it warned residents that its own messages should be discarded as spam.

A post published by the island's government on Friday said: "We have been made aware of an email purporting to be from the States of Guernsey, using the email address income@gov.gg. This is not a legitimate States of Guernsey email."

But after "further investigations", the States has concluded that it did in fact use the email address it had warned about, and the message it had encouraged islanders to ignore had actually been sent by one of its departments.

"It can sometimes be difficult to determine if an email is legitimate or not", the original post warned.

In a follow-up post published on Tuesday afternoon, the States of Guernsey said: "This is one of those times where we need to hold our hands up and apologise. Income@gov.gg is a States email address and therefore the email being circulated on social media late last week was in fact legitimate.

"We tried to quickly ascertain whether the email was a potential phishing attack and provide advice to safeguard the community, but in doing so, came to a rushed judgment. We are sorry for the error."

The government repeated its previous advice to contact departments directly if you are unsure if an email was legitimate, or you can forward suspicious emails to infosec@gov.gg.