eMail Hacked?

[caveman38]

In my momement of weakness I openened a link within what I thought was a VM email. The heading of the link suggested that I could now see my VM account bill in pdf. It asked for my email address and password which I furnished. As this resulted in no further action, I contacted VM who instructed me that they hadn't sent it. 

Since then I have changed the account password but wondered what damage I could have done. Apart from giving the hacker access to my emails till the password change. What else can they do and what more can I do? 

Thanks

[coenoby]

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@caveman38 wrote:

What else can they do and what more can I do? 

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I hope you do not use the password you entered into the phishing website on any other online accounts you have. One thing the scammer will do will be to try using your email address and password in a range of other online sites, like Amazon and eBay for example, to see if they can gain access to your account on those sites. That's known as "credential stuffing" and is an easy way for scammers to commit fraud on your online accounts.

So if you do use the same password elsewhere you need to change the password on all those accounts as well as your email account. Change each of them to something different.

I would also make it more difficult for the scammers to regain access to your email account by changing the password reset question on your VM email account. You can do that in the My Virgin Media account for the VM email account, it's on the same page as the password edit/reset option.

I would also set the automatic sign out of your webmail account to 5 minutes. That is about as much as you can do to disrupt the scammer if they had already opened a session of your webmail account before you changed the password.

Sign in to your webmail account and follow steps 1, 2 and 3.

I hope that's helpful.

Finally, I forgot to say that it would not be a bad idea to run a full AV scan on your device in case the scammer's website was able to introduce some malware on to your device. However, if you went on the website using an iPhone you should have nothing to worry about.

Coenoby

[caveman38]

Thanks for the reply. I was told the other day by VM that I could only reset password over the phone which I did. I cannot see the option online. I also cannot see the option to change security questions but did see the timing option which I changed as per your advice. Where is the security questions edit option page?

[caveman38]

Looking at all my paperwork. It appears that I didn't set up any security questions when my NTL email account was set up perhaps 20 years ago.

[coenoby]

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@caveman38 wrote:
Where is the security questions edit option page?.

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Sign into the My Virgin Media Account (not the webmail account itself) for that  email address by entering that email address and password using this link   https://virginmedia.com/my-virgin-media 

Once you have signed in,  click on the "Update settings" tab and then the "Account details" tab. Scroll down that page and you will see a place to edit the password.

Just below that is the option to edit (set) the "password recovery question". That terminology seems to have replaced the "security questions".

I hope that helps.

Coenoby

[caveman38]

Thanks for that, I've found it. As I said, I have changed my password already on the phone, should I change it again. Also, I have not submitted security questions before, should I set one up now?

[caveman38]

Sorry to be a pain, I should have asked. If I change the password on that page. Will it change only my "My VM Acc." login password or both that and my primary email address password too?

[Graham_A · Accepted solution]

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@caveman38 wrote:

Sorry to be a pain, I should have asked. If I change the password on that page. Will it change only my "My VM Acc." login password or both that and my primary email address password too?

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It will change the password for the My Virgin Media account and email address of the specific email address used to sign into the page.

Each VM email address that you have has its own My Virgin Media account and password.