Date of registration of e-mail addresses

[Felim_Doyle]

Is there a way to ascertain when my NTLWorld e-mail addresses were first registered? I may have a legal requirement to demonstrate that some of my e-mail addresses have been registered and in use for several years.

[jpeg1]

The problem you will have is that under GDPR, every company is required to delete all the personal data they have about a person after they cease to be a customer.  So Virgin should have deleted any records of your account.

Here is the official guidance on how to obtain any data they may still have:

https://ico.org.uk/

[用心棒]

Write to the Data Protection Officer at either:

• Virgin Media Limited, 500 Brook Drive, Green Park, Reading. RG2 6UU
• dpo@virginmedia.co.uk

[Felim_Doyle]

Firstly, I am still a Virgin Media customer so deleted data isn't the issue. Secondly, I don't need to go the ICO or DPO route with VM although I will be doing so with another organisation.

I was hoping that there was some way that I or the Virgin Media support crew might be able to tell from the account when each of my NTLWorld e-mail addresses was originally registered.

I can go back through my e-mails to see when the first e-mail [that I have retained] was sent / received but it isn't as accurate and not perhaps as legally acceptable as a means of proving the age of the e-mail addresses.

Thanks for the suggestions but I was already aware of both.

[用心棒]

Good to read that you were already aware of suggestions.

FWIW I would have thought that in a legal framework the data sought would be more acceptable coming from the Data Protection Officer than something posted here via the Forum Team.

[coenoby]

---

@Felim_Doyle wrote:

I can go back through my e-mails to see when the first e-mail [that I have retained] was sent / received but it isn't as accurate and not perhaps as legally acceptable as a means of proving the age of the e-mail addresses.

---

To be honest, you say you are being asked to provide evidence that your e-mail addresses have been registered and in use for several years.

In that case then surely being able to supply examples of the emails you sent and received together with copies of the associated email headers (also known as "source") is as good a way as any of showing the email accounts  have been in use.

The fact an email address was registered in, say 2010, does not prove that you were using it in 2010. I must admit that in the past I have opened email accounts and for various reasons never actually used them to any great extent.

Just to explain, email headers or source for your incoming emails list the various steps that an email took from the moment the sender pressed the "send" button to the time it popped into your inbox.   Ok, I accept that any document can be faked but I'm not sure you can get anything else.

To view and copy the email headers / source for any incoming email:

• sign into your VM Webmail account
• open an email you have received
• follow these steps

When you click on "View source" a window will open and you will be able to copy and paste the full document into any text file (such as MS Word) you like.

Whether the agency which is asking you to provide this information will understand how email headers work is another matter of course but they, along with copies of the emails themselves are evidence the account was in use 😉

 Coenoby

[Felim_Doyle]

Without going into specifics, it's more about the e-mail address than any e-mail sent or received from / to it. Also, as you mention yourself, I'd prefer that I didn't have to produce e-mails that could be considered faked or that might contain sensitive information. BTW, there's no agency asking me for proof of anything, I am the one challenging another organisation.

Think of it in a slightly different way. Imagine someone was trading under a particular business name and I needed to show that I had been using that business name long before they were. It's a bit more like that but not exactly.

Yes, I can probably get away with producing historical e-mails sent and received from / to the e-mail addresses in question but I was hoping to establish an exact date of when they were first registered, even if they weren't used straight away.

[Zach_R]

Hi @Felim_Doyle,

Thank you for your posts. We're here to help.

I can see that some other members of the community have offered some suggestions to assist you with your query. Did they help, or would you still like some assistance from us on this?

If it's the latter, can you confirm if you're currently a Virgin Media customer with active broadband services?

Thanks,
 

[Felim_Doyle]

Yes Zach, I am a long-term and current Virgin Media broadband, TV and telephone customer and would like to establish when my NTLWorld e-mail accounts were first registered. There is one in particular that I need to know about now but it would be useful to have details for all of them.

However, I have just realised that some of that historical information may have been lost when NTLWorld became Virgin Media but I would still appreciate any assistance in establishing longevity if the accounts.

[Zoie_P]

Hi Felim_Doyle, 

Thank you for your reply we can certainly help you with this, did you create an account with NTL, or during when we were taking over?

Have you requested a DSAR request as advised by our community above?

Zoie