changing user names for two email accounts

[Anna8]

Hi

I've received an email from VM to my virginmedia email account asking me to change my user name to another non-Virgin account for authentication purposes.Should I just change this one, or should I also change my ntlworld email account's user name? I use the ntlworld one more, so I'm a bit surprised the email has come to my virginmedia one.
Thanks for any help you can give.

[coenoby · Accepted solution]

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@Anna8 wrote:

I've received an email from VM to my virginmedia email account asking me to change my user name to another non-Virgin account for authentication purposes.

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For some time now Virgin Media have forced you to supply a non VM email account before you could reset your VM password. That non VM address then becomes your VM username and is also the email account they use to send your verification email as part of the password reset process.

However, I am a bit suspicious of that email because this is the first time I have heard of them sending out emails asking customers to update their accounts.

"should I also change my ntlworld email account's user name?"

Well, you will eventually be forced to do it so you might as well do it now.

However, I would not use any links in that VM email in case it is a scam. When you sign into your "My Virgin Media" (MVM ) account to make that change you should either use this link https://www.virginmedia.com/my-virgin-media   or the bookmark in your browser that you usually use when you sign into your MVM account.

By the way, unless VM have made a recent change, you will need to use a different non VM email address for each of your VM email accounts.

Coenoby

[Anna8]

Thank you very much, Coenoby, for your helpful explanation and advice, especially the bit about needing to use a different non VM email address for each of my VM email accounts. I'd wondered about that. I'll need to create another non VM account, which is a bit of a drag.
I think the email about changing the user name is genuine, as when I clicked on one of the links it took me to the VM website.

[coenoby]

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@Anna8 wrote:

I think the email about changing the user name is genuine, as when I clicked on one of the links it took me to the VM website.

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Ok, as long as you are sure it really was the genuine website. It is very easy for scammers to generate websites that look identical to the real ones but which steal the login information that you enter,

I'll need to create another non VM account, which is a bit of a drag.

Just a tip for you if you already have a Gmail account,  Google tend to go their own way when it comes to complying with accepted standards so they ignore any dots (.) in gmail addresses.

So for example, if there is a Gmail account richardbranson at gmail.com then any emails addressed to

• richard.branson at gmail.com (with a dot between the names) or...
• richard.b.ranson at gmail.com (with a second extra dot) or...
• any other variation with dots in the part before the  @ symbol

will all arrive in the richardbranson gmail account because as far as Google are concerned they are the same email account.

However the VM system will see them as different email addresses and remain obvious to the fact that the verification emails they send for any of your VM accounts all arrive in the same mailbox.

So being creative with the dots in the address when you specify a Gmail account as your non VM address is a work around to avoid having to set up an additional  Gmail account for each of your VM accounts.

I am not recommending you to use a Gmail account by the way, just offering you one of the work arounds to enable you to avoid having to set up several email accounts that you don't really need. 😉

Coenoby

[Anna8]

Thanks very much! I didn't know that about gmail accounts and dots.
I'm actually a bit confused by what I've done or haven't done so far! I thought I'd followed all the instructions and changed my user name on my virginmedia account to a gmail account, but when I sign in, the virginmedia address still appears as an option, and the gmail account now appears as an additional account! And I didn't create a password for it so I can't sign in with it, unless perhaps I use the password for the virginmedia account. Do you have any ideas on what's happened?
Thank you,
Anna8

[Anna8]

I've just spoken to a very helpful VM person, and it seems that basically the new user name doesn't replace the old one - you have it as well and sign in through it. VM don't send you a code to your non VM address - which is what they said they do in their email. It's all a bit confusing but hopefully it will work!
Thanks again for your help, Coenoby.

[coenoby]

@Anna8 wrote:

 when I sign in, the virginmedia address still appears as an option, and the gmail account now appears as an additional account!

I'm not sure exactly what you mean there but I am thinking that you are talking about the list of email accounts that come up when you start the sign in process. So this screen:

If so, then as far as I am aware, it is just a list of VM email accounts that you have recently successfully accessed /signed in to.

So for example the top Gmail address and the third ntlworld address could actually be for the same email account.

I seem to remember that when I set up my first non VM username I was always picking the old ntlworld address from the list and trying (unsuccesfully) to sign in with that. I was unsuccessful because that VM username was no longer valid despite still being listed as an option at the sign in stage!

You can just ignore the line with your old VM email address and sign in by clicking on the new non VM address since that's now the username for your VM  account.

The password will be whatever you changed it to when you specified the new non VM email address. If you did not change the password when you updated your VM account, then my assumption would be that it remains what it was before but I have never tested that myself - sorry.

Coenoby

[TBernstein2]

Have I got this right then...Is the contact (non-VM) email address also the username? This seems to be what has happened to me. I had to create an app password for one of my VM adresses. This required me to supply a non-VM email address.

After which the normal password- on the website wouldn't work- using the normal VM adress.to log in to that account. After resetting the password twice and still not being able to log-in to the web mail I tried using that external email address instead. And it worked.

So now to log-in to my VM email account (something.something@ntlworld.com) instead of clicking on that address on the VM web page I have to click on to something.different@gmail.com.

This is absurd on a number of levels.

1) Needing a different non-VM address (or at least GMail alias for Gmail users) for each VM email address

2) Making it virtually impossible to work out which email address is which unless the parallel one is similar

3) Being totally opaque- if it took me a couple of hours of clicking to get to the bottom of this less technically aware users are screwed

4) Totally unneccesary. You can have a recovery email adress without making it the user name too.

5) Being a nightmare for non-technicaly minded users who only have VM email addresses. And may not have found it easy to set that one up. let alone conjurng up a new one on a different service at a time when they might be trying to resolve an issue logging-in to the VM one.

Is there are way to communicate to VM the absurdity of this? That being said, it almost feels like a deliberate tactic to discourage us from using VM's email service.

[coenoby]

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@TBernstein2 wrote:

Have I got this right then...Is the contact (non-VM) email address also the username? This seems to be what has happened to me.

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Yes that's exactly right.

You need to use the non VM email address as the username when signing in to the webmail account and the "My Virgin Media" account,

However, if you use an email app or client, such as Outlook, or Mail, to manage your VM emails then you still need to use your original VM email address as the username in the app's account settings.

As to contacting VM, personally I don't think that will have any effect.

VM stopped issuing new email accounts a couple of years ago and since then all new VM broadband customers have not had the option to open a VM email account. Like it or not, that suggests that VM do not see email as part of the business plans going forward.

No-one knows what VM's future plans are for the future of their VM email service. Whatever happens, at least this recent change to the sign in process means that you now have a non VM email account to use instead.

Personally, I'd suggest that you start switching over to using it as your main email account and gradually phase out your reliance on VM email.

Coenoby

[TBernstein2]

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.