Virgin Media Email becoming unusable

[Thombcat]

I have probably been with Virgin Media too long.

Recent developments indicate that Virgin Media would like to get out of running an email service, although they say that existing customers will keep their email facility.

Well keeping a service would mean that emails sent to me would actually be delivered and that is not the case. One of the things that has become part of general on line security is "One Time Passwords" I have recently had issues where "One Time Passwords" being sent to me by my Virgin Mail were not even arriving the same day and so were timing out. 

Treatment of SPAM has also become an issue. Notifications to me of changes of email have been trapped by the Spam folder. Simple emails from friends are being trapped by the Spam folder. Emails from people I am dealing with are being trapped by the Spam Folder. That is all in spite of my settings having be set to mark as spam but deliver, the contacts being in the address book In fact no change to the Spam options have any effect.

The latest annoyance is the dropping of the mail servers or timing out after a few seconds. This is not during peak times but happens all the time.

I can only conclude that Virgin are either taking deliberate action to stop customers using the service or they have totally lost control and have not the ability to fix it. Could also be a major security breach that has happened but Virgin media are keeping quiet about it. Bottom line is that it is not a reliable system any more.

[jpeg1]

Yes. VM's email is slowly, painfully on the way out. Nothing more to say, 

[ALF28]

It should be possible in settings to modify the spam settings (web mail) so that spam emails are tagged but delivered to the inbox, thus preventing them going to spam. I get no spam emails sent to the spam folder, all go to the inbox which is my preference, and I can decide is the spam needs deleting out.

If using an email client, the spam filtering may need to be set up so look at options in settings.

It is a common problem with most email providers that genuine emais can go to the spam folder and will delete after a period. Some providers offer a choice of what to do with spam emails, as does virgin media.

Some emails are recognised as spam if they do not conform to email rules although they are not spam, it is the way they are configured, so always wise to check spam filter settings to avoid losing these emails.

I often get the odd genuine regular email going to spam  on the odd occasion, but also a lot of nasty spam is also tagged spam but delivered to my inbox, such as bank scam phishing emails etc. for a lot of different banks.

Spam detection is never perfect, so best to check email regularly and check the spam folder as well as the inbox each time to check for any glitches.

Some spam emails can look identical to a genuine email and are phishing emails, so check the sender  email address and headers to be sure it is genuine.

As the VM email is is no longer offered to new customers, the email service may be in decline/phased out in the future, so wise to have alternative email providers as I have now done.

I do however monitor my virgin media spam emails for anything suspicious.

[baalwayne]

Virgin email is the worst I have ever encountered.  The problems began a few years ago when they migrated the back-end from Yahoo to Google or vice versa.  They apparently 'forgot' to switch on the spam control at their end.  Incompetence knows no bounds.  I actually suspect it was by design.  They probably think that people will become so annoyed with how bad they are at maintaining an email service that they will just drop their Virgin email address and use another (such as Outlook, Gmail).  I would sooner ditch Virgin altogether (my current intention) and go with a provider such as Sky, which has an excellent email service (also with Yahoo as a back-end).  Virgin used to have a monopoly on superfast broadband, but with all of the new providers coming into the market offering speeds of up to 7 gig per sec, this is no longer the case.  I can get gigabit download at my house from another provider that is less than the half the cost of Virgin.  I say vote with your feet and your wallet.

[Graham_A]

@baalwayne As far as I know Virgin Media mail has never been associated with Yahoo.  For a brief period it was run on a Google apps platform until Google closed that option down in 2015.  Since then Virgin Media mail has been run in house by Ziggo another company under the umbrella ownership of Liberty Global.

In my experience the VM spam filters are no worse than any of the other free email providers.  It seems to me that the key factor is to 'protect' important email addresses by not using them on social media and buying/selling websites where they can easily be harvested by potential scammers.