Thousands of school children have been blocked from accessing their emails today after ‘inappropriate content’ linked to a message sent from a pupil’s account went viral within minutes.

Education bosses in East Lothian were alerted to the rogue email within eight minutes and alerted Google who shut down access to all students’ Gmail accounts over the following ten minutes across the school network.

It is understood the original email snowballed as others added ‘adult content’ in a string of messages and images, some of which were considered sexually explicit.

The council said that the email was sent out at 11.24am, IT alerted by 11.32am and Gmail access blocked by 11.40am.

While the email is believed to have been sent to all 16,000 pupil accounts the quick shut down means the majority

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