I have several ntlworld email addresses linked to my broadband/tv/phone account. One, used by my son, has recently lost webmail access. He can log in to his "additional account" and has tried changing his login password but when trying to access webmail just gets a screen saying "Forbidden". Please can you help restore his webmail access?
Thank you fro your suggestions, Obamacare. On 1) I believe he has tried both Safari and Chrome in incognito mode but still gets "Forbidden" at Mail.virginmedia.com. On 2) His email is definitely still showing as associated with my main account although his login has been changed to xxx@gmail.com to access his additional account and via this his xxx@ntlworld.com emails. On 3) We'll try that again. On 4) He has tried on phone and over broadband (at work not on Virginmedia)and gets the Virginmedia Forbidden page so it doesn't seem to be a service outage. 0n 5) We don't think this can be the case since he is actually getting the Forbidden page response from mail.virginmedia.com.
We will make further attempts as you suggest but any further suggestions or things I have misunderstood, from you or a moderator would be very welcome.
glasspath wrote:Thank you fro your suggestions, Obamacare.
It seems that the poster Obamacare you refer to in your latest post has disappeared so I don't know what their suggestions 1) - 5) were.
These days when people report getting the "Forbidden" error message when accessing their VM email account the Forum Team (VM staff members who support this forum) recommend that they go through the process of changing their Username / login address to a non VM email address. That normally seems to solve the problem.
However if I understand "his login has been changed to xxx@gmail.com to access his additional account" correctly the has already done that. So presumably he is using that gmail address to log in?
Just to clarify, when you say "and via this his xxx@ntlworld.com emails." does that mean he is accessing the Ntlworld email account by signing into his My Virgin Media Account with the Gmail address and then clicking on the "Virgin Media Mail" link?
Or is he getting the "Forbidden" error when he enters the Gmail address here https://mail.virginmedia.com/
Coenoby
Hi coenby, thanks for your reply. You are right that his login has been changed to xxx@gmail.com, but he gets the "Forbidden" response whichever of the two options you list (clicking the "my Virgin Email" box having logged in or going to mail.virginmedia.com and logging in with his gmail address there).
glasspath
Thanks again. Yes have tried resetting again but no luck so will wait for VM support.
Hi glasspath,
Thanks for taking the time to contact us via the Community. It's lovely having you on board with us in the Forums. ⭐
We're sorry to hear your son is having issues accessing his email address. As he has already updated his email address to a third party one, to unlock the account, he needs to generate an app password. Please get him to log in to My Virgin Media > Click on Account settings > Virgin Media Mail settings > scroll down to the App password section and click the Generate new App password button.
He should get a pop up message asking him to verify his identity. He'll then be sent a one time passcode to the third party email address to enter on the next page. Once verified he'll then be given an app password which will look something similar to: mail-horse-yellow-panda and he should note this down. This should automatically unlock the account within 4 hours.
If he accesses email on an email client or app, then he will need to enter the new mail password in the settings. This will allow the emails to load again. In some cases, you may need to remove the email account from the mail client or app completely and re-set it up as fresh. If this is the case for you, please ensure you use your VM email address as the username and the newly generated app password.
These changes have been put in place as Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is now required. Just as a side note, when logging in to My VM, he will need to use the third party email address as the username and the original My VM password.
Please let me know how you get on and apologies for the inconvenience.
Thanks,
Thank you Kath, We'll try that and let you know how things go.
By following the first part of your reply he was able to generate the new app password and this has restored access to webmail. He was also accessing email using the Gmail app on an iPhone (previously still working) but as you predicted this has now stopped working and he has not so far been able to restore it by re-entering his email and app password but is just getting an error message "The server for xxx@ntlworld.com is unreachable or timed out." We'll keep trying, but do you have any further advice?
glasspath As Kath wrote in her reply 'In some cases, you may need to remove the email account from the mail client or app completely and re-set it up as fresh. If this is the case for you, please ensure you use your VM email address as the username and the newly generated app password.'
Try deleting the ntlworld email account from the gmail app completely and then re add it using the new credentials.
Thanks Graham_A but he's tried re-adding the account to the Gmail app but is still getting the same error message "The server for xxx@ntlworld.com is unreachable or timed out."
glasspath wrote:he's tried re-adding the account to the Gmail app but is still getting the same error message "The server for xxx@ntlworld.com is unreachable or timed out."
And just to check, he is using the VM mail app password in the Gmail app settings rather than the same password he uses to access the email account via the VM website?
Using the VM webmail password will definitely cause the app to fail.
Coenoby
Hi Glasspath 👋 Thanks for returning to this public thread to keep it updated!
Glad to hear that you were able to regain access to the secondary email account via My VM / Webmail 👉https://virg.in/webmail
If it's still not working for Clientmail, I'd recommend just running through all the information on this help page 👉 https://www.virginmedia.com/help/broadband/manage-email-account particularly the section titled 'How to set up my Virgin Media email on a device'
We are sadly a little limited with what support we can offer for 3rd party client mail services, as it could be an issue with their platform or device (particularly if it's working via webmail.)
That being said - please let us know how you are getting on and the community will continue to offer support. Thanks for your patience in the meantime! 🌞
Thanks to you both coenby and Molly_T. I'm happy to say that my son has now managed to get his ntlworld email account back working on Gmail on his iPhone. He was using the ntlworld email address and correct password. I'm not sure what was causing the issue, possibly incorrect server details, but anyway all sorted now.
