Virgin Media Community

[johnhodge1]

Received a home Tel message “router is malfunctioning you need to get a new one > internet will go down in 4 hours. press 1 to get new router “

Didn’t press 1 ( wife confused)

is this message for real ? If so how do I get a new router ?

[goslow · Accepted solution]

These are scam attempts. Do not respond to them. Just hang up.

Read through the 'Home Phone' and 'Security Matters' forums and the same query pops up on a near-daily basis.

[johnhodge1]

• Received a home phone message saying “your router is malfunctioning -you need to get a new one - Press 1 . Your broadband will go off in 4 hours.”
  It DID go off in 3 hours ! Tried to restart but no response. Spent 45mins on phone to Virgin awaiting reply. No meaningful reply.
• Tried restarting again later and broadband came on ok ???
• so who turned it off and how was it turned off ? Is there a security risk ??

[jbrennand]

Serendipity.

VM fixing a fault or doing some updates probably.

[goslow]

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@johnhodge1 wrote:

• Received a home phone message saying “your router is malfunctioning -you need to get a new one - Press 1 . Your broadband will go off in 4 hours.”
  It DID go off in 3 hours ! Tried to restart but no response. Spent 45mins on phone to Virgin awaiting reply. No meaningful reply.
• Tried restarting again later and broadband came on ok ???
• so who turned it off and how was it turned off ? Is there a security risk ??

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Unfortunately, your router going off following the phone call is just an unhappy coincidence. Virgin Media would not make inbound calls to you like that. The format of the call and the words used are those of a common scam. If you browse through the 'Home Phone' and 'Security Matters' forums you will find the same scam mentioned many times over.

VM broadband services do disconnect from time to time and usually restart themselves fairly soon afterwards (as happened in your case).

Have you checked the 'service status' for your area to see if there are any planned works in your area or known outages going on?

https://www.virginmedia.com/help/service-status

On rare occasions, VM do send out text messages to notify customers of planned works and outages. The text messages are for information only and do not require the customer to do anything in response.

[johnhodge1]

Surely too much of a coincidence -,scam call followed in 3 hours by router turn off > according to virgin no works or outages anywhere near. 

[goslow · Accepted solution]

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@johnhodge1 wrote:

Surely too much of a coincidence -,scam call followed in 3 hours by router turn off > according to virgin no works or outages anywhere near. 

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Unfortunately, can't tell you any more than in #5 above. The same 'coincidental' explanation was also suggested by @jbrennand, one of the forum VIPs.

The link below is to a booklet from the Metropolitan Police. Pages 4 and 5 explain the 'broken router' scam.

https://www.met.police.uk/SysSiteAssets/media/downloads/central/advice/fraud/met/little-booklet-of-p...

The VM forum team should be able to look at your broadband connection to advise if there are any issues showing which might explain the temporary outage. They normally reply within a few days but can take up to a week.

One of the VM forum team will hopefully pick this up shortly to give you the official version and hopefully put your mind at rest on both the scam call and the broadband outage.