Millions of inappropriate and racist spam emails sent to Seminole County middle school, high school students

SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. — Seminole County Public Schools officials said they are trying to figure out how millions of inappropriate emails were sent to students.

So far, the district has sent out new emails warning parents and students to not open the suspicious messages while they try to delete them.

The district said all students at every high school received the emails, and some middle school students received them as well.

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One email starts off with a racial slur, features a photo of President Donald Trump and has a heading that talks about a school employee in a sexually explicit way.

There is also a photo of George Floyd with a caption that reads “Black Lives Don’t Matter.”

Over 8 million emails have gone through, according to the school district. Officials said they believe a spam bot is responsible.

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For now, school officials have blocked external email traffic to student accounts, and they are working to disable the reply all feature so the emails can’t be forwarded by students while they delete those emails from the system, which could take a day or two.

So far, the district does not believe any of the inappropriate emails went to elementary school students, but they said a similar spam email was sent to elementary students in Chicago.

The emails are believed to have originated from overseas.

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