Virgin Media Community

[captainrjm]

I received an email looking very like a Virgin Media bill including my account number. I clicked on the view bill link before realising my error. Could somebody please tell me how to report this to Virgin and what might be the possible consequences?

Kind regards R

[HowardML]

Probably this:

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Security-matters/Latest-Phishing-News-09-03-2021/m-p/4647622#M4...

VM already know so no point in reporting.

Consequences: Check you bank account for untoward activity. If you use on-line banking change your security credentials. Clear your computer's cache and cookies to remove any tracking cookie that may have been installed by clicking. Change your VM email and My Virginmedia password (they are the same)

[jem101]

All good advice from @HowardML above but there are a few further things that may have to be considered.

@captainrjm you say you clicked on the link, that would have taken you to a fake VM look-alike website, in itself that probably won't matter, but did you actually enter any details into this site? I guess it asked for your username and password - yes? If you did then the people behind the scam site now know your VM username and email address along with the associated password.

The first thing they will try is to log into your email and possibly change the password to lock you out or possibly add forwarders to send copies of any emails you receive in the future to them, they will also start trying the same combination on other sites, Twitter, Facebook Amazon etc - despite years of telling people to never use the same password on multiple site, loads still do. Armed with access to your email they'll try asking for password resets on other sites and see which ones come up trumps.

OK if you are quick, you get in first and change your VM details - that at least stops them from gaining control of your account but now you need to carefully think, have you ever used that combination of email address and password anywhere else? If you have then that account is now vulnerable although it could be weeks or months before the 'hackers' (and I'll qualify the term as they are nothing of the sort) get around to trying them - or maybe it'll be ten minutes.

You may well have a bit of job to do now - but, at least you are ahead of the game compared to most people, in that you realized what you had done and are seeking advice and taking steps to mitigate any fallout. 

[HowardML]

OMG. Yes.

[ALF28]

FAKE VIRGIN EMAILS- still coming-

 I get these but have never had one with my account number. 

examples-

E-mail Account Verification   today 4/06/2021     (your email account has almost exceed it's limit)

your last  bill remains unpaid   14/5/20201 & 15/5/20201

important information  17/12/2020   (ebill ???? )

We tried to contact you , Your IP address has been selected and you receive Your Free gift.    23/10/2020

You have (1) the new V I R G I N® reward ready to be claimed    13/10/2020

We were unable to process your latest bill  21/8/2019

The payment for your latest bill has failed.   23/6/2019

see-

Virgin Media ‘phishing’ scam could steal your identity | The Scotsman

Virgin Media Fake Email - How To Spot This Scam (againstscammers.com)

I will report the recent ones  to action fraud and virgin phishing. Some have links or attached documents (which are not virgin)

Non of the sender email addresses are from virgin media but some are spoofed to look like a virgin email  with "from field" containing  "virgin media"

e.g.   Virgin Media <xxxxx@xxxxxx.net    (sender address  always fake not virginmedia.com)

None are picked up by the virgin spam filter, so not identified as spam.

alf28

[Hayley_S]

Hello @ALF28,

I am sorry to see that you are having scam emails, I know this are not fun to receive.

Please can you follow the advice on this page here? 

Look forward to your response.

[ALF28]

Hayley_S-scam emails

Thanks for the link in your post (page here) to virgin media fraud and security, have not seen this before and have read this and printed off the data including email security.

The advice is very good and wide ranging on many subjects.

I have had no virgin security alerts, checked my virgin contact email today  so I think my account and equipment is secure.

The fake emails are easily identified and I use a different contact email address now  (changed it a while back)  so any email from virgin to my primary email are fake, I changed the contact address to be secure and use a gmail contact email/username  because my primary virgin email was getting spam.

The advice not to click on anything in the email is wise and always logging into the genuine website to check accounts.

I found the advice on computer security excellent and coupled with advice from the community I do regular check on updating software and browsers.

I rely on the firewalls  in the hub3 and windows 10 firewall so just make sure they are both switched on.

alf28

[Hayley_S]

Thank you for your kind feedback 🙂

I am glad that the page gave you a lot of good advice @ALF28

Please do let us know if you have anymore questions in the future.

Have a lovely weekend.

[ALF28]

SCAM EMAILS-update

Still coming I received a virgin media  bill notice yesterday, originating from a  London server btcentralplus  via france  server big-stores  with sender address mail.com. (your  last bill remains unpaid)- the sender has the ability to change servers every time so may be using special software.

The virgin scam emails all have a red ❗ exclamation mark indicating high importance, this appears close to the date in the email.

This is uncommon and only ever seen this on the antivirus scam emails  from sender "hargray" that started in 2020 and continued into 2021, now ceased.

It may be the same scammer at work as no one else uses this red exclamation mark.

However I now have my inbox whitelisted for know contacts only, so all the remaining unknown emails go to spam and  a holding folder via filters.

I received an unusual survey email from Northern Powergrid but may be genuine, as I appear to be registerd with them with my virgin email but can not reset the password so will ring them, had no emails from them before, and I have a record of changing to a different email with them so odd.

alf28

[ALF28]

scam emails update-

My Northern Powergrid  email was genuine, so sorted that one by ringing them up, always wise to check out if an email is valid if in doubt.

ICONS IN EMAILS-

The use of icons in emails is unusual  such as low priority, high priority, set colour etc. Just recently  (2020/2021) I have notice these coloured icons in some emails from certain sources, especially in spam/scam emails, as most people do not use icons for general  emails, although emoji are often used in the subject of marketing emails. They are probably there to attract attention to the email such  as a red flag, exclamation  mark etc and they can be done in some mail software such as outlook.

The use of icons in emails is rare but I am now watching for them, usually  it is like a trademark for a particular sender to include an  icon, I have some with blue dash which indicates low priority if I hover the curser over the icon (unknown dating emails)

Some gambling/betting emails have red flag and this is a set colour icon, reason unknown.

When composing a virgin email in the options, the email can be set as normal priority, low priority or high priority, I have never used this before but tested this out today  (sending emails to myself) and this provides the red exclamation mark for high priority, and the blue dash for low priority as seen is some spam emails, so I assume this is a standard option across email services.

Spammers can algorithms to change the sender address each time to avoid spam filters, changing the sender name and also the domain.

Opening emails can be dangerous-see

Why just opening a spam email could open the door for fraudsters (lovemoney.com)

Images, links and attachments can lead to hacking/phishing.

alf28