No mail from the BSI - what does that mean?

If you haven't received an email after the BSI security test, that's good news for now. However, the BSI test results do not always reach the recipient immediately.

How long does the BSI security test take?

If you have been "positive" in the BSI test, the Federal Office for Information Security usually notifies you immediately, ie a corresponding email should arrive in your mailbox after a few minutes at the latest.

• However, the BSI mail server has often been overloaded since the botnet hack was announced; therefore, according to the BSI, shipping can only take a few hours if in doubt.
• The corresponding positive notification has the sender "BSI Security Test" and the subject line "Your request at security-test.bsi.de with the identifier XXXX" (see screenshot).
• The identifier is the four-digit code that was displayed to you after entering your email address on the BSI website.
• If you have received such an email, the article "BSI test positive - what to do?" further.

What to do if you have not received a BSI email?

• If after a few hours (users report up to 5 hours "waiting time") you have not yet received an email from the BSI, you can feel relatively safe - your email data was apparently not spied on by the botnet hackers.
• For security, you can also have your BSI mail account checked several times.

Why doesn't the BSI send "negative mails"?

The reason for the fact that the BSI only sends e-mails with "positive results" can be found in the FAQ of the BSI:

• "Since we have implemented a service that everyone can use anonymously, it is unfortunately not possible to prevent anyone from entering any e-mail addresses for checking that are not his own. Reply-to emails would also be sent if they were not affected, citizens who are not affected would also receive the reply emails, even though they did not use the service themselves. "