Email Problems

[Jovi]

I'm having some problems with my Virgin email (NTL World email from days gone by).

The account was hacked a week ago so we reset the password immediately, and we notified Virgin through their phishing email. We have also reset the app password as suggested by the auto-response from the phishing email reply.

Since then our entire inbox has been emptied (not by us). We receive new emails sporadically and then they disappear within an hour or so. This is affecting webmail and the mail app on iphone and on ipad, they all exhibit the same behaviour.

I have reset the email again and it continues to behave the same way.

Any suggestions would be much appreciated.

Thank you
Jo

[coenoby]

@Jovi 

You mentioned in your first post that "We receive new emails sporadically and then they disappear within an hour or so."

That behaviour could also be due the fact that the hacker still has access to your email account via an open session on their device. They could allow them to delete these incoming emails remotely as and when they like..

I think that may be why @用心棒 is advising you to set the automatic sign out to 5 minutes in an attempt to bump the hacker off your account. (Sorry @用心棒 if I'm misinterpreting things there).

More worryingly though, if emails are disappearing from your account seemingly at random, it could suggest that there may be other emails coming in to your account that the hacker does not want you see. If you saw those emails you would be aware of the hacker's illegal use of your email account so they are deleting all your incoming emails.

Whatever, personally,  I would suggest that you need to:

1. follow @用心棒's advice regarding the automatic sign out.
2. check out any other online accounts linked to your VM email account for suspicious activity such password resets, new transactions or any activity you do not recognise.
3. Reset your email password and email app password again and while you are at it also change your "Password recovery question" in your My Virgin Media account.

Apologies to all for butting in to this thread but hopefully you'll find these suggestions helpful, even if they are a bit scary. Better to be safe than sorry though!

Coenoby

[Jovi]

Thanks, I have just set this to 5 minutes to try this out but I don't understand how this is could resolve this issue

[Jovi]

Yes, we've been through that page, there's no malware on the computer and the login is secure, the password is unique and complicated enough that nobody would be guessing it.

The question is why have they been deleted?
Once we realised the account had been breached, we changed the security details and everything was fine for a week, then everything started disappearing after we reported it to Virgin.

Is there any way for you to check logs and see where logins have been made?
Like how my Google account can check the devices, times, locations, IPs of logins?

And what action, if any, has been taken by Virgin Media after we notified them?

[Jovi]

Thank you,

Ok, I understand, I've set the logout to 5 minutes now. I've changed the password and recovery phrase again too.

The disappearing emails seem to have stopped now at least.

We were alerted to the hack by a flood of holiday bookings. Someone booked 35 holidays through our account. Strangely, they did not use our credit card to pay for them so it's more concerning and annoying than it is damaging.

Unfortunately, booking .com cancelled our genuine holiday so we ended up having to book that again at a higher price.

Thanks again for your help.
Jo

[RoyCa]

I too have had problems I could not access emails on Microsoft Edge or Chrome since last Monday. Yet I could access via the web on my phone. I downloaded Firefox and that worked. So I deleted all Cookies from Microsoft Edge and Chrome and they too returned to normal with email access. I notice a lot of people struggling so I suggest trying this first.