Forum Discussion

breezefly's avatar
breezefly
Joining in
4 months ago

Hacked accounts and issues with changing secondary email account passwords

Today my primary account was hacked through the weak security checks used at VMO2.  I finally managed to get access back to the primary account and have been on the mission of password updates across all the secondary accounts since but with all the changes which VMO2 have imposed, they certainly don't make it easy but that's what you get for outsourcing.

So forgoing the issue of requiring a 3rd party email address to access a "VMO2" email account and for the fact that a gmail sub-address is not allowed, I'm now stuck in a loop of not being able to update my account passwords due to not being able to edit the new email I am trying to use to rebuild my VMO2 account for the secondary addresses. 

In short, I want to edit the email address I want to use for the new account setup but I am unable to edit the address I originally used as there is not an option to change it.  I've cleared caches, logged in/out, different accounts, incognito mode, etc.  Nothing.

Can the forum team please get in touch to help resolve this issue please.

Thanks

  • coenoby's avatar
    coenoby
    Very Insightful Person

    breezefly wrote:

    the fact that a gmail sub-address is not allowed,


    That's right, Gmail sub-addresses are not allowed but you can take advantage of the unusual way Gmail handles email addresses.

    Unlike almost every other email service Gmail ignores the "'." (dot) symbol in their email addresses.

    So if you have a Gmail address of "breezefly@"  gmail.com then emails sent to "b.reezefly@ " Gmail.com will arrive in your breezefly Gmail account.  However, as far as VM email is concerned, "breezefly@ "  gmail.com and "b.reezefly@" gmail.com are seen as being two different email addresses. (I have written the email addresses in that way to avoid them being picked up as real email addresses.)  

    That means you can take advantage of Gmails unusual behaviour and associate one Gmail email address with a number of different VM email accounts as long each has the dot in a different place in the first part of the Gmail address.

    I know that for a fact because I have only one Gmail account but use it, with the addition of a dot in a different place in the address, for all my Ntlworld.com and Virginmedia.com email accounts. VM's verification emails for all my VM email accounts all appear in my Gmail account and don't cause any problem.

    Coenoby

     

     


    = means that if that you use

  • Hello breezefly.

    Thanks for your post. 
    Sorry to hear about the issue with regaining access to your email account
    I’d like to investigate this for you.
    If you don't mind, I’ll need to send you a private message to pass security. 
    If you can check the logo top right of your screen that would be great. 
    Regards     
    Gareth_L