Is this genuine?

[Bikerdave]

Having been subjected to the VM email account hacking I received this today that looks like a response from this community site but when compared to other responses it looks like a fake? Can the mods please confirm if this is genuine or fake? It is the top response which does not refer to who has sent the response, it also says Hi and not Hey. I am now paranoid about using links so to me this is a fake which is scary.

 

[Graham_A]

@Bikerdave The 'someone has replied' message is a standard system reminder sent out seven days after a response has been posted to a forum question.

It regularly confuses users making them think a new reply has just been posted.

[ravenstar68]

Whilst it's good to be paranoid to some degree about using links.  A little knowledge can make you less paranoid.

All valid Virgin Media community links will start https://community.virginmedia.com/ so if you hover over the link with your mouse and view it then provided the first part up to the first single / reads as above then the link is safe.

The only caveat to this is Outlook.com email addresses which modify the links to point to through one of their security measures

https://gbr01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fcommunity.virginmedia.com%2Ft5%2FT...

However even this includes the URL that the link points to:url=https%3A%2F%2Fcommunity.virginmedia.com%2F

%3A = :
%2F = /

So it can be possible to click on links provided you check the link address first.

[Bikerdave]

Many thanks, currently using phones so mouse hover a little tricky!

[ravenstar68]

I can't speak for android ATM but on the latest iOS versions if you hold a finger on the link you'll see a number of options including Copy Link

You can then view the link by pasting it into a note in the notes app.

[Bikerdave]

Using android and it does work in a similar way.