Ok, problem started yesterday (24th Oct) morning when my email client started reporting “incorrect password” on my secondary email account. ‘Aha’, I thought, ‘seen this before, account locked due to spam detection, need to reset password’.
So I tried to do this using the method I knew, which was login with primary account and change the secondary’s password. Only there is no facility to do that now. Instead, I tried to use the “forgotten password” link when logging in via a browser using the secondary account. At this point it asked me for date of birth and mother’s maiden name. Entered both correctly, no dice.
Searching this forum shows that VM have changed this protocol fairly recently, but have neither migrated any default settings from the primary to the secondary, nor notified users that they need to set up security questions for the secondary accounts.
Today I eventually spoke with a second level tech chap who seemed to know what he was doing and said he would reset my secondary password and then I should login with that password and change it. At the same time I could then set up the necessary security questions and responses. The first level chap didn’t really understand my problem, and as my emails are “.ntlworld” domain kept advising me to go to ntlworld.com.
He promised to call me back in half an hour, which he did, only to explain something was wrong his end and he way creating an IT ticket. ‘Ok’, I thought, ‘surely then I’ll be able to login to my my primary account and check progress’. I then found I am locked out of my primary account too.
Unless someone from VM is on here and can help, I guess at this point I’m just (a) venting and (b) adding to the rash of complaints about this security system. Still, it makes me feel better but I am distinctly unhappy with the idea of being without email.
(And there’s no real point in selecting the “email me when someone replies” option 🙂
