Deleting old NTL world accounts

[Richardel121]

Hi guys, I currently have broadband with virgin. Years ago when it was ntlworld.com I set myself a email account and had my partner on the account with her own email address. She received 1 Email yesterday and 1 today informing her her account has been hacked and they have access to her phone (which I doubt) but are send her threatening emails from her own ntlworld address that they will send photos and videos from her phone if she did not pay them $500 that was and increase of 400 from yesterday. I called virgin as I could not access my virgin email so they reset my account that I am still unable to access. They said I could delete both mine and my partners ntlworld emails and all emails attached but I can’t . We really need these old ntlworld address deleted completely. I have tried calling Virgin and have currently beed waiting over 6 hours including yesterday for help via whatsapp, I also tried twitter but got no reply. Can you help please.

[coenoby]

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@Richardel121 wrote:

She received 1 Email yesterday and 1 today informing her her account has been hacked and they have access to her phone (which I doubt) but are send her threatening emails from her own ntlworld address that they will send photos and videos from her phone if she did not pay them $500 that was and increase of 400 from yesterday.

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That sounds like an extremely common scam that has been going the rounds for years. As I expect to realise, the scammer's threats are all total fiction. They do not have access to your partners device nor do they have any incriminating  videos or photos.

See here for advice from the UK National Cyber Security Centre   https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/guidance/sextortion-scams-how-to-protect-yourself including on where to report them to the authorities.

Regarding the fact that the scan emails are apparently sent from your partners email account, this is also a sham/scam.

The scammer does not have access to her account and the emails do not come from her account. It is very easy to spoof (fake) the sender's address in an email to make it appear to come from any email address the scammer wishes to use. There has always been  a basic weakness with email in general in that the email address in the From: and Sender: fields in an email header does not have to be the email address that the email actually comes from. The scammer is doing that simple to increase the fear factor to get their victim to pay the blackmail money.

Coming on to :

"They (VM ) said I could delete both mine and my partners ntlworld emails and all emails attached but I can’t ."

Are you able to access your "My Virgin Media" account where you can view your VM bills and contract?

If so, sign in from here https://virginmedia.com/my-virgin-media  and go to "Account settings" then "Account details" and scroll down to "Manage other My Virgin Media accounts"

If these ntlworld email accounts are linked to your Primary account they will be listed there together with the option to delete them.

If you cannot access that Primary My Virgin Media account you need to go back to VM to get them to reset it again.

Sadly, if one of the email accounts you wish to delete is the Primary account username (the one you use to sign into your My Virgin Media account) then it cannot be deleted. Post back if that is the case and there are some suggestions on your options going forward.

I hope this information is helpful especially the advice from the NCSC. Sadly even though the scammer's threats are fake they still cause a lot of worry and inconvenience.

Coenoby

[Richardel121]

Dear Coenoby

Thank you for your reply.

these are old email addresses that are no longer linked to my virgin account as I had moved from virgin and back to sky again so I am having big troubles trying to get into my account that was the main account. 

I have been in touch with virgin who have raised a ticked for their IT team and I have also sent their fraud team an email.  

I am pretty sure they do not have access to her phone but they have managed to get into and change passwords of a few shopping sites she uses but fortunately she has seen this quickly and changed the email associated with these accounts. 

They have also changed the password on her old NTL account so we are unable to access it to delete the account or linked emails.  

any further help would be greatly appreciated.

best regards 

Richard

[coenoby]

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@Richardel121 wrote:

these are old email addresses that are no longer linked to my virgin account as I had moved from virgin and back to sky again so I am having big troubles trying to get into my account that was the main account.

I have been in touch with virgin who have raised a ticked for their IT team and I have also sent their fraud team an email. 

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Thanks for coming back, it seems that you are on top of this.

The sad thing is that if VM had complied with their own Terms and Conditions they would have deleted these old ntlworld email accounts 90 days after your previous VM broadband account was closed. That would have prevented all these subsequent issues.

If the previous broadband account has been closed there is no way you can get into the relevant My Virgin Media account and delete these email accounts. That has to be done by VM. Keep chasing them - don't assume they will contact you.

I know you have reported it to VM's Fraud Team but if it was me I would still report it to NSCS as well - that certainly would not hurt in any event.

"I am pretty sure they do not have access to her phone but they have managed to get into and change passwords of a few shopping sites she uses "

Unless you have evidence to the contrary, it is entirely possible these hackers may be different people to the sender of the sextortion emails.  There are regular posts on this forum from people having their VM email accounts hacked and used to access other online accounts. In truth many of those are likely to be down to information gathered from data breaches in conjunction with data stuffing - where  people use the same password on a number of different sites. The https://haveibeenpwned.com/ site is a great resource.

The hackers' task is also helped by the fact that until fairly recently VM had a limit of just !0 letters or numbers on their passwords. Thankfully that has now been increased.

Even so, if you and / or your partner are now using VM email accounts issued as part of your current VM broadband account I would strongly advise you to move over to using email accounts from a dedicated email provider. If nothing else, most email providers offer greater security such as 2 factor authentication on their accounts

The other point is that VM stopped issuing new VM email accounts to their customers in May 2022. They do still support the VM email accounts of current broadband customers but the long term future of the VM email service is uncertain. 

I hope VM do manage to get these old email accounts deleted for you.

Coenoby

[Steven_L]

Hey Richardel121,

Welcome to the community and thanks for taking the time to post here on the forums.
I’m sorry to hear of the issues that you’re having with your old NTL world email accounts, I would be happy to take a further look into this for you and get the email addresses deleted from the system but first I would need to confirm a few details via private message, please look out for my message and we can get started.
Kind Regards,
Steven_L