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Potential data breach at virgin media

f825_633
On our wavelength

Its my belief that a data breach has occurred at Virgin Media and worse still they maybe trying to cover it up.

When the account was setup with Virgin Media they were provided an email address that does not exist anywhere else and is only used for admin purposes with VM. I create personalised email addresses for even supplier so that I can easily find emails and when I leave I cancel the email address cutting them off and should they leak my email address to someone else then I can trace it back to source.

Around three months ago I started receiving emails to the address only given to VM. I contacted that source and asked them where they had got the address from.

They said it was within a list they had bought as cleared email addresses to use for marketing reasons.

I ask for that source and they provided the details, so I know exactly who gave it to them.

I contacted the privacy team at VM and asked if they had shared my email address with anyone.

The first response was that they do not share any information with anyone and shut me down.

I went back, this time giving them a copies of the marketing emails and again asked how this other company had obtained an email address only shared with VM.

This time, I received a telephone call from VM. The person said that they had conducted an investigation and my email address had not been shared with anyone. He then said that he had gone online and searched public marketing databases that had been breached for my email address.

At that point I asked him, what permission he had to put my personal email address into a public search facility, he became very coy and wouldn’t answer. I asked him if he were part of the data privacy team or legal team and he said no. I suggested he go back and speak with someone trained in data matters and get clarification as he has just violated my privacy again!

 

A couple of days later I received an automated email from the company that bad been sending marketing information saying that my request to change email address had been processed and gave me the IP of the request.

 

The email address it was changed to was my general email address and the IP address was a virgin media IP.

 

So it seems someone on a VM connection that had both the original email address that was only known to VM and the general email address I use as a throw away email address had gone to that company and requested a change. Very suspicious.

 

I’ve been back to VM and they are being very silent and refuse to respond. They’ve only got a few days left before I report them to the ICO for a potential data breach, I also intend to explain that I believe VM have also tried to cover up the breach.

 

Be on your guard people, it looks like VM are sharing email addresses deliberately or by accident with other companies.

 

 

 

3 REPLIES 3

goslow
Alessandro Volta

Plenty of data sharing possibilities listed here

https://www.virginmedia.com/legal/privacy-policy

You presumably have marketing consent turned off in MVM.

There has been regular speculation on the forum that some of VM's data handling might be a bit 'leaky' but no strong evidence has ever been presented on here so far AFAIK to identify what has been happening. The fact you have used a unique email address, and have identified individual organisations, means you have a better prospect of coming to some conclusions about what has happened in your case.

If you get as far as the ICO, be prepared for a wait. I used them once in the past when a supplier made some data public and the supplier would not communicate with me. ICO took several months to respond but once the ICO contacted the supplier, the supplier then got in touch with me after ignoring all of my communications to that point.

用心棒
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Use the contact details provide here Privacy Policy | Legal | Virgin Media (under How to contact us section) to raise a complaint and if a satisfactory resolution is not reached then raise with ICO.

Consider using the reputable online service Have I Been Pwned: Check if your email has been compromised in a data breach to see if the compromised email address appears in any known data breaches.

FWIW:

  • With your “canary in the mine” having done its job consider discard it and starting afresh with a new email address in case the unknown data breach is ongoing
  • I also use unique email addresses with services and am yet to see similar evidence of compromise nor similar forum posts

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Ayisha_B
Forum Team
Forum Team

Hi @f825_633 👋

A warm welcome to our Community Forums and thanks for your post. 

I would like to take a closer look into the concerns you have raised so will pop you a PM 📩 now and we can take it from there.

Hope to hear from you soon. 

Ayisha_B
Forum Team

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