The UK’s universal postal service said on January 11th that international delivery services had been “severely disrupted” by what it described at the time as a “cyber incident”.

A week later, CEO Simon Thompson confirmed the business had been hit by a cyber attack. He told a UK parliamentary committee that the mail service believed no customer data was compromised in the attack, but it had notified the country’s Information Commissioner’s Office, as a precaution, and said that a “workaround” would be in place soon. 

Ongoing strike action in Britain, however, has compounded the issue, meaning that Royal Mail has been unable to publicly confirm when disruption, caused by last month’s online attack, would be fully resolved and delivery services would run as normal. The backlog is mounting.

As recently as Friday, February 3rd, Royal Mail warned that “Delivery of International items may take slightly longer than usual and customers using Tracked services may notice different tracking information as items leave the UK”. 

It said in a statement: “We have made further progress in exporting an increasing number of items to a growing number of international destinations. We are using alternative solutions and systems, which are not affected by the recent cyber incident.”

Royal Mail said that the following services have now resumed:

• International Tracked, International Tracked & Signed and International Signed;
• All international untracked services are now available for purchase online for Consumer and On Account customers;
• Untracked personal correspondence letter services and non-personal correspondence International Untracked core services have resumed for Business Contract customers.

But, it still cannot process new parcels purchased through Post Office branches. Customers can still access the following export services through Post Office branches: 

• Sending export parcels through Parcelforce Worldwide;
• Dropping off items they have labelled online;
• International standard and economy letter format service.