Google says it has detected and stopped thousands of phishing attacks targeting email accounts of Iranian users ahead of the 14 June presidential election.

In an online statement, the firm said it had noticed a “significant jump” in the region’s overall volume of phishing activity in the last three weeks.

The timing and targets suggested the attacks were “politically motivated”.

Friday’s poll is the first when President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won a controversial second term.

The election had triggered angry protests, with voters accusing Mr Ahmadinejad’s camp of rigging the results in his favour.

Fake sign-in page

Google’s vice-president of security engineering, Eric Grosse, said the phishing attacks originated from within Iran.

Phishing attempts to obtain passwords and other private computing information by directing users to fake websites.

“For almost three weeks, we have detected and disrupted multiple email-based phishing campaigns aimed at compromising the accounts owned by tens of thousands of Iranian users,” he said.

“The timing and targeting of the campaigns suggest that the attacks are politically motivated in connection with the Iranian presidential election on Friday.”