@ryanpiran wrote:
@David_Bn
Thanks for your reply. It would seem from the number of people having this exact same issue reported on the forum there may have been a security issue that has led to a large number of account being locked then?
No I'm not the account holder. This is a family account so the account holder is actually my father. It's an email address I've had for many years but is my primary email address which I need access to.
This is a general message to anyone who might read this thread, not just the original poster. I am not a legal expert, and I am not a business contracts expert, nor an expert in domain name rules. This is my understanding of the system.
Unless you have your own personal domain, and run your own mail-server, you do not own "your" email address. Any VM domain addresses (virginmedia.com -- blueyonder.co.uk -- ntlworld.com -- virgin.net) are owned by Virgin Media (or any parent company - I guess that is Liberty Global or whoever it is in future).
The Terms and Conditions at Virgin Media allow account holders to create and use a primary address which is permanently linked to an account, and up to 9 secondary addresses at any one time permanently linked to the primary address profile. There are also some alias addresses for blueyonder accounts. The email addresses have a mailbox attached. There are conditions that have to be met for all these to be active/enabled.
The named account holder can access any of the secondary email addresses - read the emails, send emails, delete emails, delete contacts, change the password to the account, even delete the address and mailbox ENTIRELY, after which it can never be recreated. The named account holder can gain access to any service linked to the email address - bank accounts, shopping accounts, social media, etc.
The named account holder can cease Virgin Media services and all those addresses are meant to close after 90 days. The named account holder may die or become incapacitated, and the account closed or transferred to someone else.
Except in the case of under-age family members, do you really want someone else in control of your favourite email address and precious personal data?
Virgin Media provide the email services as a free add-on to the broadband service. While I'm sure they don't intend to close it - they could do so with very little notice! At the moment, it helps create sticky customers. People who like their email address and don't want the hassle of leaving their ISP because they don't want to change email address, even when prices rise or service is not to their liking.
But VM don't guarantee any service level. Generally it works, sometimes it breaks down for everyone. Sometimes it breaks for some customers. The support is patchy, the spam filtering has good days and bad days. The security level is not really good enough for modern banking and finance transactions.
So have a long hard think about whether you really need an email address that has these limitations. It is probably worth the hassle to choose a new one and gradually move your requirements over to it.
All these email addresses are under the control of the named account holder.
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