Virgin Media Alert: Your device may have a malware infection

[WillHeslop]

Please can someone let me know whether this is real?

[Don't want to post account details on an open forum...]

And if so, provide more details...

Thanks

Will Heslop

A device using your internet connection may be infected with malware

Dear Mr Heslop,

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

[coenoby · Accepted solution]

@WillHeslop 

Yes it seems that is the letter that VM send out.

See here for discussion on an earlier example: https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Security-matters/IMPORTANT-Virgin-Media-Alert-Your-device-may-h...

Coenoby

[WillHeslop]

Thanks; yes I'd seen some similar cases.

I would like VM to give me any details so I can try and pinpoint why this happened.

Haven't been able to get into mail for a couple of days, so must assume that it's locked. Ongoing problem with e-mails which are listed as sent from me, but not actually sent by me (spoof send/return address). Usual scam/spam stuff.

Will reset password when I am (more) sure that it's safe to do so... Not worth doing if there IS malware at source... (which I doubt, but deing safe) So running Virus Scans on everything!

Will Heslop

[coenoby]

---

@WillHeslop wrote:

I would like VM to give me any details so I can try and pinpoint why this happened.

Ongoing problem with e-mails which are listed as sent from me, but not actually sent by me (spoof send/return address). Usual scam/spam stuff.

---

One of the Forum Team (VM employees who support this forum) should get back to you via this thread in the next day or so.

Sadly, I am not sure they will be able to give you much more information than there is in the letter.

If there are emails being sent that appear to come from you I would certainly advise changing you email password and the security questions on your My Virgin Media account. That will at least deter the spammers /scammers from being able to send emails using your credentials to authenticate them through the VM servers.

Coenoby

[Molly_T]

Hi Will, 

Sorry to hear of the issues with your email. This all sounds like a legitimate email from us. There is more information about this issue in this thread. 

Have you had any success after following the troubleshooting steps? (Anti-virus scans and password change.)

Let us know how you are getting on so we can offer further support if needed. 

All the best. 

[WillHeslop]

Password change seems to  have worked.

And a virus scan on my PC has shown no issues.

But I would still like further information, so I can try and locate the source of this issue. A number of devices are connected to the network, so I need to narrow it down. I can provide account details if rrequired, but I would rather not post this on a public forum!

These include Windows PC, Mac, phones, tablets, and smart devices.

Thanks,

Will Heslop

[Serena_C]

Hi @WillHeslop

Thanks for getting back to us, I'm glad to hear that the password reset worked for you and your mailbox is now unlocked 🙂

Unfortunately we are unable to detect the root cause of the malware issue from here. Did you run an anti-virus scan on all your devices? If so, were any issues detected on a particular device?

Kind regards,

Serena

[thefrasers]

THIS KEEPS HAPPENING!
Why?
It's not as though I'm doing anything bizarre or naughty. But I keep getting emails asking me to reset my password and run a virus scan (which takes hours). Of course the virus scan never finds anything, and every time this happens I have to change all of my other mail clients.
It is becoming depressing and tedious.
I'm unconvinced that Virgin know what is going on with this stuff. Every time I ask for an explanation, no one will tell me anything - they just say "if you change the password it will be okay". Which kind of misses the entire point.

Please sort this out.

[Tom_W1]

Hi @thefrasers thanks for your post here in the Community although I'm sorry you're having issues with your email.

The emails you are receiving from us are genuine, and generally when this happens it's because we may have identified that the email address in question is potentially sending out spam emails to other email addresses as one example.

I would advise continually following the steps given, but also please review this thread too to see if this gives you any further tips.

Many thanks

[thefrasers]

So no actual change that gets rid of this continuous problem? The advice is tedious in the extreme and is taking up too much time and energy. If the problem is at Virgin's end, shouldn't they fix it. I'm unaware of other providers having the same issue.