Email issues

[Anonymous]

I have an old virgin media email account which I can still access through my iPhone and receive daily emails. 

I have recently had a security issue and wanted to log in and change the password. When I try to log in on the Virgin media website using the email, it says this is not found.

I think someone else may be accessing my emails and want to get this sorted ASAP. How do I address this when I can’t get logged in?

[jem101]

When you say an 'old virgin media email account' do you mean that you are not a current broadband customer and this is some old legacy email address that you have been using for a while now?

If that is the case, then the message saying that it can't be found would point to the address and mailbox having been deleted by VM as part of a cleanup of old mailboxes no longer associated with an active broadband account.

[Anonymous]

Hi there,

Yes an old legacy account however I still receive emails daily and can use this to send emails still so it must be active.

I can see on my phone that someone else is using the email to sign up to apps etc so would like to shut it down completely if possible. 

They used the account earlier to hack into my Instagram also. 

[Zach_R]

Hi @Anonymous,

Thank you for your posts and welcome to our community forums. We're here to help.

I'm very sorry to hear about this. As @jem101 has advised, if the email address in question isn't linked to an active broadband account then it will become permanently deactivated and deleted. What message does it say exactly when you attempt to log in online?

Thanks,
 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for your reply.

I’ve had the account for around 12 years and I’m still able to send and receive emails via my phone on the mail app. Would I be able to do this still if it was deactivated? 

When I  try log in, it says username not found.  

[coenoby]

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@Anonymous wrote:

 I’m still able to send and receive emails via my phone on the mail app.

When I  try log in, it says username not found.  

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I am assuming that when you said it was a "legacy" account you mean it is no longer linked to an active VM broadband account.

The apparent contradiction  you are seeing can be explained. It means that VM have removed access to the Webmail account but have not actually deleted the mailbox itself. That seems to happen quite a lot when VM "delete" an orphan email account, in other words the deletion process does not fully complete.

In those cases, apps such as the Mail App on your phone can still access the email account because they use a different route (IMAP and SMTP) rather than accessing the Webmail account directly. (That's simplifying it a bit but that's the best way to think of it 😉)

One of the Forum Team such as @Zach_R should be able to get the relevant VM IT team to fully delete the account for you. I think it normally takes around a week to10 days. 

I will just add that if there is anything in that old email account that you need to keep for future reference you need to back that up outside of your mail app ASAP. Once VM delete the email account you cannot rely on the Mail app to maintain the info it currently holds.

Coenoby

[Anonymous]

That makes perfect sense. Thanks so much for your reply. Hopefully can get it fully shut down. 

[Zach_R]

Hi @Anonymous,

Thank you for expanding on the situation. I'm going to send you a private message in a few moments so we can take a closer look at things.

Please respond to this at your earliest convenience and we can go from there.

Thanks,