Hello
I don’t know if you’ve tried to send any post internationally lately, but I wouldn’t if I were you. You see, Royal Mail have got into another spot of bother – and it’s nothing to do with striking posties this time!
Last week, they were the victim of a ransomware attack – a very nasty piece of software that scrambles all the information on a system and locks you out of the computer so you can’t get in to fix it.
According to The Telegraph, the ransomware has infected the computers that Royal Mail use to print customs labels for overseas post. And until they can get those computers up and running again, they can’t send anything internationally.
It’s not clear yet how much the crooks are asking for to decrypt the files, but it won’t be the sort of money you’d find down the back of the sofa. There’ve been some pretty crazy ransom demands after attacks like this over the last couple of years – tens of millions of pounds!
An update posted on Royal Mail’s website today says it still can’t send packages internationally. “Royal Mail is experiencing severe service disruption to our international export services following a cyber incident.” it reads. “We are temporarily unable to despatch items to overseas destinations. To support faster recovery when our service is restored and to prevent a build-up of export items in our network, we’re asking customers not to post international items until further notice. We would like to sincerely apologise to impacted customers for any disruption this incident is causing.”
So if you’ve got anything you need to send overseas, best hold on to it for now.
And if you’ve ordered anything from us to be sent outside the UK, I’m afraid we won’t be able to send it until this problem gets sorted out.
Hopefully it won’t take too long (or be too excruciatingly expensive) to fix. I wish Royal Mail the very best of luck with it.
Yours
Julie Wakeling