virgin.net e mail orphaned from broadband supplier

[clivesmith6]

I was a virgin user when dial up was the only internet provision. I have been using the email service since then. I do not believe I have received any indication that the service was time limited, when I was moved from dial up to broadband, or more recently when virgin media turned off the aliasing facility for IEE.ORG emails.

If there is a time boundary why is that not mentioned in the help pages?

Why have the help pages not been adjusted to show the password limitations for forgotten or compromised passwords?

[Kath_P · Accepted solution]

Hi clivesmith6, 

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 you've had issues with an orphaned email account. 

Email addresses are only valid for those with an active broadband account with us. Once you decide to no longer have a broadband service, the email account will usually delete within 90 days of disconnection. This is listed in the terms & conditions when setting up an email address.

There have been multiple changes to the email service and one of those includes setting up the account for multi-factor authentication. We've also been running scans and those email addresses that are not linked to an active service would be locked. 

Do you have a Virgin Media broadband service with us? If not, you'll need to set up a new email address with another provider as we would be unable to help you further. 

Thanks, 

[clivesmith6]

Thank you for the reply Kath_F

From where we are now looking back some of the information is reasonable. However the presumption that I made all the decisions and was given information at the time of change is incorrect. Virgin would or could not supply broadband when the dial up account the household had with virgin.net was finding it difficult to maintain bandwidth. Terms and conditions that would have been appropriate in my case would be those linked to a dial up account. The only thing I can recall was the assurance when I set them aside that the email account would (and has) remain serviceable.

I understand why VM want to improve security and that orphaned accounts don't lend themselves to that. But here is a question, who has the responsibility for the data currently locked into the virgin.net server on my behalf? 

Finally who apart from the lawyers think it is sufficient to disclose this sort of information in the small print of a document I doubt many of us have read to the point of understanding all the ramifications contained in it until it is past being helpful. 

[Steven_L]

Thanks for coming back to us clivesmith6. 

I understand why VM want to improve security and that orphaned accounts don't lend themselves to that. But here is a question, who has the responsibility for the data currently locked into the virgin.net server on my behalf? 

We can ensure all of your data is secured securely within our systems and network. If you have any questions with regards to your data, this would need to be taken up with our data protection officers, you can get in touch with that team here [REMOVED] and you can find our privacy policy here.

When your mailbox is to be deleted, this will be locked to prevent any further access and securely deleted by raising this with our internet security team and IT, to ensure that all the data is deleted from our all of our systems and servers. 

I hope that this helps to answer your questions, also we're here to offer the best support if possible. not to dispute terms and conditions or business practices.

To raise a subject access request visit - https://www.virginmedia.com/help/dsar-faq

Kind Regards,

Steven_L