403 Forbidden on webmail (Again)

[heliart]

Hello,

I'm posting this on behalf of a close family friend I'm trying to help. Last Friday (9th June 2023) they could no longer access their virgin email via the webmail interface.

They get a redirect to a forbidden message, and Chrome seems to think it needs translating from Luxembourgish!!!

This exact issue has been reported by others on this forum, namely:-
https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Email/403-Forbidden-on-webmail/td-p/5206671

This issue has nothing to do with their local setup, or browser as I see the exact same issue loggin into webmail using their account on my PC's. Clearing caches etc makes no difference, nor does Incognito mode. See the same with Chrome, Firefox and Edge.

Looks like some backend server issue? Related to email inbox overlimt perhaps? But there's no way to log in to check.

Any ideas?

Steve

[coenoby]

@wilber_force 

As I promised, I have escalated this to the Forum Team (VM staff members).

Coenoby

[Travis_M]

Hi @wilber_force 

Thanks for posting on our community forum and sorry to hear about the issue with your mail.

I am going to drop you a private message now to collect some more information so we can look to get this issue resolved for you. Keep an eye on your inbox for a message from myself.

Regards

[Djpallen]

Hi Gareth,

I have been facing the exact same issue now, i.e. receive a message of '403 Forbidden' when I tried to access my VM email account. I have cleared the browsing history and cache, have used other web browsers, restarted my laptop and been on the phone with VM Customer Service for nearly 3 hours, as you can imagine they are useless and I am still facing the same issue.

I did try the solution posted by EyesSquared on 14th June, although it hasn't worked.

I hope you can kindly help me to find a way forward.

Many thanks

David

[Carley_S]

Hi @Djpallen 

Welcome to the community forums

Sorry to hear that you have a 403 Forbidden error when trying to access your Virgin Media email. 

I have not been able to locate you on our systems. Just to confirm, do you have an active Virgin Media broadband account currently?

If so, do you get the same error when using both Webmail and an email client such as outlook or gmail? 

[Djpallen]

Hi Carley,

Thank you for your reply.

I am an existing VM customer and have been with VM for years now.

I don't have the same issue when I use Gmail. (I presume you meant accessing my Google emails not VM emails).

Hope you can help.

Many thanks

David

[Megan_L]

Thanks for coming back to us Djpallen. 

Sorry you're still dealing with this "403 Forbidden" issue 😥 Could you tell us how you're logging into your VM Email please? 

Is it via your Online Account or through a webmail client? 

Have you tried to login to your email through different devices to see if it still comes up with the same error? 

Also, have you tried to reset your password for your email/Online Account via the "forgotten password" route? 

Thanks for your continued patience, we will continue to help until it's resolved!

Thanks,

Megan_L

[l0zzie88]

Did anyone get a solution to this, seems to be a prevalent issue with Virgin Web Mail. 
Do we know the cause and the solution, is this Virgin clearing their caches and settings?  

Thanks

[wilber_force]

As far as I'm aware, VM have stopped allowing users who have a VM related email address such as virginmedia.com blueyonder.co.uk and others from logging into their email accounts and have forced the users to use non VM email addresses such as gmail.com, etc.

I was given NO warning, it just happened which gives me cause for concern that VM are farming out their email service to others and also the same with their mobile service as I have been forced to go to O2 with a poorer service.

I know this may not be pleasant reading but that is how I see it.  Others may have a different view, and I'm open to read them.

[Graham_A]

@wilber_force  Sorry but you have got that completely wrong.  The recent changes made by VM require a third party email address to be used as the username to log into VM email addresses via VM webmail and the My Virgin Media account attached to each email address.

This does not change the underlying email address which will continue to operate as it always has.

VM stopped allowing new VM email addresses being created eighteen months ago but have said that existed email accounts will continue to be supported.

The username changes are being made to enhance security by allowing a version of two factor authentication to be implemented.

As regards the switch of mobile accounts to O2 this is part of the ongoing merger of VM and O2 into a combined entity.

[wilber_force]

Thanks Graham for the reply.

The point I'm trying to make is that I was not advised and it all came out of the blue that I could not log in using my primary blueyonder.co.uk address.  Having said that, I have a second VM address and I CAN log in using that.  This is why I'm totally confused as to why VM made the changes they did.

I do understand why they did it.

No more to say.