Secondary email account missing.

[amihopke]

In 2015, I created a secondary email account which I used as the address for some stuff for my son. He used it to sign up with some app etc, and he'd occassionally email himself photos and whatnot. 

He told me tonight that he hasn't been able to log into it for a while, but he wasnt worried because he thought he just forgot the password, and all his emails to himself have gone through (seemingly). But when I tried to log in on the desktop, the sign-in screen says that it does not recognise the username or password.

I went to check via "manage accounts", to my horror, the tab says I can create up to 9 addtional accounts, and that I haven't set up any addtional accounts yet. 

I even went so far as to type in his email address as if I were making an entirely new addtional account for him, and it says the email address isn't available. 

I'm begrudgingly resigned to the fact that the actual emails in the account might be gone, but if that is the case, is there a way to at least be able to use the same address again? 

[coenoby · Accepted solution]

---

@amihopke wrote:

... is there a way to at least be able to use the same address again? 

---

There is not I'm afraid. 

Virgin Media, like Gmail, Microsoft Outlook.com and most major email providers do not allow deleted email addresses to be used again. Actually, Microsoft used to allow it but they stopped a few years ago after concerns were raised about the security risks it created.

Of course in your case it does seem a bit extreme. However, for example, Microsoft stopped recycling old addresses because lots of people were opening up what they thought were "new" Microsoft Hotmail / Outlook accounts only to find they were getting email notifications from organisations such as Facebook along with personal and business emails that related to the previous "owner" of their address.

You can wait to hear that officially from one of the Forum Team (VM employees) when they pick up this thread in the next day or so. Also, they may possibly be able to check out what has happened to the missing email account.

Coenoby

[amihopke]

I did fear that might be the case.

I'm reluctant to create a new account for him with VM without some sort of explanation of what might have happened to the previous one.

Thank you for your response, btw. Hopefully the VM team can tell me what might have gone wrong, or if its something we did on our end to prevent it happening again. 

[John_GS]

Hi amihopke

Thanks for posting and welcome to the community.

I am sorry to hear of the email issue. I'll be more than happy to look into this for you via PM.

Kind regards,