on 20-03-2024 19:35
Hi there,
I'm writing this one on behalf of my other in law who has had a @ntlworld.com email address for about the last 20 years but like most people of that era has used a poor password on it.
With us both having made various calls to Virgin Media today it seems that she has never had an actual Virgin Media account, or at least never had one that's been linked to this email address. to the best of her knowledge she got this address around 2000 and I don't think was still with NTL at the time of the NTL>Telewest>VM mergers.
I have read through some of the posts on here which say she is out of luck on a password reset but I figured I would put this one in here to just be sure about what can be done.
Right now she still has access to the address and has done without issue for 20 years but the password has been guessed by a scammer who will periodically email her one of the 'send me some bitcoin' emails - but will send it from her own address along with telling her the password. Ideally we can just change the password and be done with it. Is this possible and who should we talk to?
I'm happy to send the email address in a dm to someone representing Virgin Media.
Thanks
Answered! Go to Answer
on 20-03-2024 20:08
The problem here is that if your MiL isn’t a current VM broadband customer, then the only thing that the forum team here can do is to arrange for the email address and mailbox to be fully deleted. At some point she must have had access to a legacy NTL broadband account to get the address, once this terminated, then the email should have been ended some 90 days afterwards. In practice this doesn’t always happen promptly and they can linger on in a sort of zombie state. But are always liable to be deleted without further warning at any time.
It is very likely that her email hasn’t actually been hacked, but rather she used the same password on another site, sometime in the past which has been. Imagine, for example that ‘Fred Bloggs Hardware’s’ site gets hacked and the hacker gets away with a load of email addresses on passwords used on that site - knowing that, alas, people still tend to use the same password on many sites, they take a punt and email everyone on the stolen list and as, ‘I know your password is xyz’, so pay me money or else!
Like I said, if she isn’t a customer, VM won’t help to change the password and allow her to continue using the email address, at best they will offer to delete it. So what I strongly suggest is that you create a new email address for her with another provider; both Microsoft and Google offer free .outlook.com and .gmail.com addresses. Having done that, if she is still able to send and receive emails from her existing ntlworld.com address, then she starts the process of going through all of her contacts and informing them of her new address, to be used in the future.
Then she can request VM to delete the old mailbox entirely, which is likely to happen at some point anyway.
on 20-03-2024 20:08
The problem here is that if your MiL isn’t a current VM broadband customer, then the only thing that the forum team here can do is to arrange for the email address and mailbox to be fully deleted. At some point she must have had access to a legacy NTL broadband account to get the address, once this terminated, then the email should have been ended some 90 days afterwards. In practice this doesn’t always happen promptly and they can linger on in a sort of zombie state. But are always liable to be deleted without further warning at any time.
It is very likely that her email hasn’t actually been hacked, but rather she used the same password on another site, sometime in the past which has been. Imagine, for example that ‘Fred Bloggs Hardware’s’ site gets hacked and the hacker gets away with a load of email addresses on passwords used on that site - knowing that, alas, people still tend to use the same password on many sites, they take a punt and email everyone on the stolen list and as, ‘I know your password is xyz’, so pay me money or else!
Like I said, if she isn’t a customer, VM won’t help to change the password and allow her to continue using the email address, at best they will offer to delete it. So what I strongly suggest is that you create a new email address for her with another provider; both Microsoft and Google offer free .outlook.com and .gmail.com addresses. Having done that, if she is still able to send and receive emails from her existing ntlworld.com address, then she starts the process of going through all of her contacts and informing them of her new address, to be used in the future.
Then she can request VM to delete the old mailbox entirely, which is likely to happen at some point anyway.
on 20-03-2024 22:24
Thanks a lot for the answer, it's pretty much what I thought. I guess there's only so long these email addresses from the beginnings of the internet can last until they end up being serviced by a company that doesn't have an interest in maintaining them.
on 21-03-2024 09:34
Hi @xe thanks for your post here in the Community although we're sorry to hear of the concerns you've raised here.
As @FlockWallpaper has mentioned, regretfully once an email no longer belongs to a Virgin Media account (or may not have done in this case), we cannot reset the password from our side.
This does mean that sadly we'd not be able to help here and we do sincerely apologise.
If there's any further help you need from us, please let us know.
Many thanks
on 21-03-2024 09:48
Hi Tom_W1,
I have a similar problem to xe - I no longer have a Virgin Media account but my ntlworld email is still active.
I'm receiving emails 'send me some bitcoins' and showing an old password.
Can my account be deleted?
Many thanks
on 21-03-2024 11:57
Thanks @Tom_W1
If I want the account deactivated is there an email address I can contact? My MiL is going through the process now of transferring things to a new account and considering that the password has been guessed it's best if the account gets disabled or removed to save from it being used for impersonation scams down the line.
If there is an email address at Virgin Media which she can email from the account asking for it to be deactivated this would be best. I can ask her to register here if needs be but likely it will take some time - we do not live close and I'd probably need to go there.
Thanks
on 21-03-2024 14:13
Hi xe,
Thank you for reaching back out, we can arrange deletion of the email, I will send you an invite into a private chat, look out for the white envelope to accept.
Regards
Paul.
on 21-03-2024 15:01
Thanks Paul_DN