Hacked email account

AndyM0509​ 

The first thing is that scammers / spammers don't need to gain access to your email account to send out emails that appear to come from you.  It is relatively easy for them to spoof (fake) the email address in the "From" field in emails.  That means that even though the email does not come from your account,  when they open the email it is your name and email address that is displayed to the recipients.  Sadly there is nothing you can do to stop that. Any email address can be spoofed, even a non existent email account!

However if you cannot access your email account you can try going through the process of changing the password:

1. Sign In to My Virgin Media  with the affected email address and the current password
2. Go to “Account settings”, then "My Virgin Media Account details"
3. Scroll down the "Security and sign in details " section and click on "Edit" to the right of password.

Follow the prompts. If you have not already specified a non VM email address to act as your VM username you will be prompted to do so. That's now a security requirement of VM accounts. Your VM email account and address will remain the same but in future you will have to sign into VM with your non VM email address.

You will also have to generate a "Mail app" password to use as the email password in your Mail app on your phone but you should see that as you follow the password reset process.

Try that and see how you go.

Then post back because if the password really has been changed by a hacker you have a lot more to worry about. The bad guys don't hack email accounts to use for sending spam emails, there are much easier options open to them whne it comes to sending spam.   They hack email accounts to:

1.  try to get access to any online accounts that are linked that address. There is much more money to be made from fraudulent transactions than by sending spam
2. to use the hacked email account to set up new online accounts (identity theft in other words) and lots more opportunities for fraudulent transactions.

So, if your email account really has been hacked you will have to watch out for that.

Coenoby

Thanks for your reply. I assume they have changed my password because I can’t log in. Tried to get virgin to sort it but since it’s my partner’s name on the account they won’t do anything until they speak her!