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[IMPORTANT] Virgin Media Alert: Your device may have a malware infection

TunbridgeWells
On our wavelength

I've received an email from Virginmedia, subject "[IMPORTANT] Virgin Media Alert: Your device may have a malware infection", and the text (extract) below. There is no information as to what suspicious activity has been detected, or (more surprisingly) which mailbox is affected (so I can't change the password as suggested). I see some other people have also posted about such messages, and been contacted by someone from virginmedia.

 Here's the email..

A device using your internet connection may be infected with malware
 
Dear Mr xxx,
 
You have received this email as one or more of your Virgin Media mailboxes has recently been locked due to suspicious activity being detected.
 
It is important that you:
 
a. Do a full virus scan on your device with up-to-date anti-virus software
b. Reset your password to something new, unique to this account and secure.
 
After resetting your password, your mailbox will automatically be unlocked after 15 minutes.
 
Please ensure that the above points have been completed to prevent your mailbox from being locked again.
 
More help and support
 
For extra advice, or to double-check that this is a genuine Virgin Media communication, head to our community at virginmedia.com/community, click 'Help forum' and join the conversation on the Security Matters board.
 
Kind regards,
 
The Virgin Media team
1 ACCEPTED SOLUTION

Accepted Solutions

coenoby
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

@TunbridgeWells wrote:

................There is no information as to what suspicious activity has been detected, or (more surprisingly) which mailbox is affected (so I can't change the password as suggested).

 Here's the email.............

A device using your internet connection may be infected with malware

You have received this email as one or more of your Virgin Media mailboxes has recently been locked due to suspicious activity being detected.

Please ensure that the above points have been completed to prevent your mailbox from being locked again.

The email is obviously genuine but there are some inconsistencies in it.  (I have just quoted the relevant parts.)

Firstly, I cannot see how changing the password on your email account is going to solve a malware infection on any of the devices on your network. Spambots can infect a variety of different devices and they do send out vast quantities of spam emails but they don't use your VM email account to do it.

In the past, when VM have suspected that there is a spambot infection they have blocked emails being sent from VM email accounts via email apps or clients (such as Outlook). However, that has not come up recently on the Email section of this forum so perhaps they have changed their policy.

Secondly, you say you don't know which of your email addresses is affected.  However, the wording in the letter says that any affected email accounts have been locked which would be a bit of a hint as to which email account needs attention.

You don't mention anything about any of your email accounts being locked or you having any problems accessing your emails so it does not seem that VM have locked any of your email accounts. If you do find one of your email accounts is locked here is a post that goes into more detail of how to unlock it yourself https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Email/Email-accounts-locked-mailbox-unable-unable-to-access-ema... 

Possibly this a catch all letter that covers a number of potential security issues but does not go into any useful or specific detail.That's not much use to anyone is it?

Interesting to see what the VM Forum Team can add, unfortunately I suspect that they are not privvy to the full details either.😐

Coenoby

I'm a Very Insightful Person, I'm here to share knowledge, I don't work for Virgin Media.

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8 REPLIES 8

coenoby
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

@TunbridgeWells wrote:

................There is no information as to what suspicious activity has been detected, or (more surprisingly) which mailbox is affected (so I can't change the password as suggested).

 Here's the email.............

A device using your internet connection may be infected with malware

You have received this email as one or more of your Virgin Media mailboxes has recently been locked due to suspicious activity being detected.

Please ensure that the above points have been completed to prevent your mailbox from being locked again.

The email is obviously genuine but there are some inconsistencies in it.  (I have just quoted the relevant parts.)

Firstly, I cannot see how changing the password on your email account is going to solve a malware infection on any of the devices on your network. Spambots can infect a variety of different devices and they do send out vast quantities of spam emails but they don't use your VM email account to do it.

In the past, when VM have suspected that there is a spambot infection they have blocked emails being sent from VM email accounts via email apps or clients (such as Outlook). However, that has not come up recently on the Email section of this forum so perhaps they have changed their policy.

Secondly, you say you don't know which of your email addresses is affected.  However, the wording in the letter says that any affected email accounts have been locked which would be a bit of a hint as to which email account needs attention.

You don't mention anything about any of your email accounts being locked or you having any problems accessing your emails so it does not seem that VM have locked any of your email accounts. If you do find one of your email accounts is locked here is a post that goes into more detail of how to unlock it yourself https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Email/Email-accounts-locked-mailbox-unable-unable-to-access-ema... 

Possibly this a catch all letter that covers a number of potential security issues but does not go into any useful or specific detail.That's not much use to anyone is it?

Interesting to see what the VM Forum Team can add, unfortunately I suspect that they are not privvy to the full details either.😐

Coenoby

I'm a Very Insightful Person, I'm here to share knowledge, I don't work for Virgin Media.

Have I helped? Click Mark as Helpful Answer or use Kudos to say thanks

Zach_R
Forum Team
Forum Team

Hi @TunbridgeWells,

Thank you for your post and for bringing this to our attention. Is your Virgin Media mailbox locked when you try to access it?

Thanks,
 


Zach - Forum Team
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Hi @Zach_R,

Thanks for your reply.

The mailboxes we use regularly seem to work ok. I have a couple of others I'm not sure of the password for, I could check them by setting new passwords.

Can you tell me which one is supposed to be locked?

The email is from internet-security@virginmedia.com It also contained the line "Our reference: VMIS158-SUSPICIOUS_ACTIVITY-F009318608". If that doesn't mean anything to you, perhaps this is just a spoof. It has unexpected font changes and at the bottom says " © 2013 Virgin Media. All Rights Reserved. ", It does have my account number though. Maybe recycled from an 8 year old email. 

Thanks

coenoby
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

@TunbridgeWells wrote:

"Our reference: VMIS158-SUSPICIOUS_ACTIVITY-F009318608". If that doesn't mean anything to you, perhaps this is just a spoof.


Not definite proof of course but based on other posts on this forum it does seem genuine - see here for a very similar experience (and reference) to yours https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Security-matters/Email-mailbox-locked-due-to-suspicious-activit... 

Coenoby

I'm a Very Insightful Person, I'm here to share knowledge, I don't work for Virgin Media.

Have I helped? Click Mark as Helpful Answer or use Kudos to say thanks

Hi Zach

I have received this message 3 times in the past few weeks and my email account keeps getting blocked so I am cut off from work, unless I use web mail. I use Norton and have a free McAfee version so my computer is scanned regularly but the solution the first time it happened required me to call 150 and the help team struggled to understand what was happening but changed my email password and then restarted my account after about 5 hours downtime. The second time it corrected itself and released my account block by itself and now the third time today my account is blocked again.

This is becoming a pain. Can you suggest how to prevent this happening again?

Cheers

jeff

daveg3
Joining in

I am having the same problem.

i SUSPECT it is because i am a member of a club and i send out two lots of emails every week to over 100 people and the system thinks this is suspicious.

would love to know who to speak to to stop this happening??

Zoie_P
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

Hi Daveg3,

Thank you for your reply, do you have a business account with us and this is a business email? Or are you a residential customer?

If it is a residential account it goes against your terms and conditions to use this for business use.

We cannot block these from being sent out they are sent out for security reasons.

Zoie

Hi Zach,

One of our email accounts was blocked on 28th Oct, I changed the password and originally thought it was still blocked, but in fact that seems to have fixed it.

Thanks,

Peter