Virgin Media
My Virgin Media
Mobile Your Account
@JonBee wrote:"I I think I might have read that other programmes other than webmail will not be knocked out of an NTL email account by a password change? Is there anything else that can be done to stop this unauthorised access?"
I think you may be referring to the fact that the hacker may not be affected by a password change if they already have a webmail session of your email account open.
The only thing you can do to mitigate against that is to update the automatic sign out period for your webmail account to 5 minutes by following steps 1 - 3 below:as below:
While you are at it, I would also reset the "password recovery question" for that email account. The option to do that is just below the password edit option on the Account Details page of the "My Virgin Media" account.
"I'd delete the email address entirely if it were possible. "
That would indeed be a good option but sadly the Primary email account address for a VM broadband account is effectively "baked" into the Virgin Media system so it cannot be deleted. As far as I am aware that is how it has always been.
However, in May last year VM stopped issuing new email accounts to customers and although VM still support the email accounts of existing customers, the whole future of the VM email service is unclear. Since May 2022 VM appear to have been making changes to their systems. For example new VM customers have to use their own third party email addresses as their Primary address to register with VM. Also, you can no longer reset passwords for secondary email accounts from the Primary "My Virgin Media" account because each secondary account now has its own "My Virgin Media" account.
I have not seen any information that suggests they have made any changes that would allow Primary VM email accounts to be deleted but the Forum Team (VM staff who support this forum) will be able to confirm the position on that. One of them will contact you via this forum in a day or so.
Coenoby
@JonBee wrote:I had assumed that it is apps such as Outlook etc., rather than webmail logins, that would continue to be logged in to the account without being
Once you have changed the email password, email apps and clients such as Outlook will continue to have the old password in their settings. That means they will report errors when attempting to send, receive or delete emails for that account so email apps should not be a problem.
However, if the hacker can discover the new password obviously they would be able to update the settings in Outlook.
Looking back at your first post and seeing that you specifically mention the hacker being able to delete eBay emails makes me realise there is something else I should have suggested in my first post.
Hackers often set up filter rules in the hacked account to delete or autoforward specific emails to hide their activities. Once they have done that the rules remain in operation until you delete them.
Check whether they have done that by the signing into your webmail account and following these steps. If there are any rules or an autoforward you do not recognise you can disable them or preferably, delete them completely:
Hope that makes sense.
Coenoby
