VMUser1812
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Re: Loss of Email - F010762348
Yeh well like that’s a massive surprise, no? OK, realistically, for anyone who has lost historic email and folders, the (un)official VM response is along the lines of well sorry about that, but they are all gone and are not coming back, tough really! And I would really, really like to be proven wrong, and it would be easily done, by a simple official statement from a VM employee along the lines of ‘yes we have had an issue, but please be assured that everyone who has lost historic email, it will all be restored, and we have proper and verified backups* and we just need a bit of time to do it’. And the longer it passes before a similar statement is given, the less likely it is that you, Mr Customer, are ever, ever goi g to get your old email back! *almost as if i know what a company’s spokespeople are advised/ordered to say to minimise their legal exposure!1.4KViews1like1CommentRe: Loss of Email - F010762348
pluggulp wrote: My conclusion is that they are spineless cretins. Not one of them is prepared to stand up and say 'I am Spartacus.' To be fair, yes you might have a point, but, if you are a member of the forum team, ie a VM employee and you have been given explicit instruction from your bosses (looking at you Kai), to only say xyz, or else! What would you do? The longer this goes on, the more likely it is that VM have basically lost all of your historic email, sorry about that but tough, will be the response to this. And yet, still no VIP (specially privileged forum members), have bothered to wade in and offer any sort of help or advice, odd no?1.2KViews0likes0CommentsRe: Loss of Email - F010762348
PHIL1000 wrote: Never give up; Never surrender........where have I heard that before????? Oh, oh, oh, I know, was it in the terms and services, small print, when you signed up to Virgin Media? Look you have to make light of this situation because the alternative is somewhat depressing, no? Not that I am in any way, trivialising, the catastrophic loss that some people look like they are facing. But it is what it is, you know, I’m going to call it out, because someone has to, for anyone who has lost important historic email, I suspect that VM have lost them and they are never, ever coming back. I’ve worked in this field for long enough to be able to read the signs, and I have to say they aren’t looking too good! On the other hand, a VM representative can easily prove me wrong by posting on here along the lines of, ‘it’s all OK, we do have full backups of everyone’s email (which would actually be a contradiction of previous posts, but still), and we will restore everything, just need a bit of time! I suspect such an announcement will not be forthcoming! So you can draw your own conclusions from that!1.4KViews0likes3CommentsRe: Loss of Email - F010762348
If, and it’s a big if, VM have lost those historic email and don’t have any backup, then there simply is no workaround, they are gone, gone permanently and can never come back. Basically, your only hope is that VM do have some kind of backup and a restoration procedure, but even if they do, how long it might take, is a bit up in the air.1.3KViews1like0CommentsRe: Loss of Email - F010762348
Oh and sorry, forgot, one other thing. It does appear that a number of people who previous couldn’t send or receive email, now can, and that’s good. What would be better though is a post from someone, just one would do, who claims that they had lost all of their historic emails but a day or so later, they all started to come back. That would, at least indicate that VM do have some kind of restoration procedure, and even if it doesn’t work for everyone, and some proportion of customers end up never getting their old messages back, there is at least a degree of hope. Now there have been one or two cases of people reporting that their folder structure has reappeared, albeit there are no messages in the folders, which is a hopeful sign but not definitive. Assuming that the VM message is true and that they are actually “working flat out….’ to restore messages, I would have expected by now, to have seen at least one or two posts reporting that this has happened, and everyone else needs to just be patient. The lack of said post, unless, I have just missed them, is somewhat concerning, no?1.3KViews1like0CommentsRe: Loss of Email - F010762348
For what it’s worth, I do believe we may have two or more separate issues going on here. Firstly, a (large) number of users reported, starting back on late Saturday, that they were unable to connect to their VM mailbox or send or receive emails. After a couple of days, it would appear that VM managed to re-enable the ability of most, if not all of these people to be able to send and receive new emails, but all old, historic messages suddenly went missing. There are a number of customers who are reporting that they still can’t connect to their mailboxes and hence send or receive email, but their old historic messages are still there. However, if you look back through this forum, you will see reports from people claiming that their connection hadn’t worked before Saturday, and this could be due to a number of issues, not being a current VM subscriber and VM have finally gotten around to closing your mailbox; VM have a policy of locking mailboxes which they think have become compromised in some way, and the fix is to change password etc. The problem is that when you have a set of potentially overlapping issues, trying to fix one can compound the problem and you end up in a worse state. Now the latest missive from VM’s marketing / damage limitation department, claims that anyone affected by whatever the hell happened on Saturday, has been fixed and you should all be able to send and receive new message, old historic ones is still completely up in the air, but still! Let’s be fair and assume this is the case, the first thing you need to do is to try accessing your email via a web browser on https://mail2.virginmedia.com Log in with your current email address and password, does this work? If no, and it throws up an issue along the lines of ‘your account is temporarily unavailable’ etc, then you might want to now try changing the password and trying again. If still no luck, then I’m afraid you need to wait for VM to sort the issue out or not, there really isn’t much more you can do! On the other hand, if it works, then good, your mailbox is intact, try sending a test message and relying to it. Does that work? If yes, then also good, can you see all of your old historic messages? If yes, then give thanks to whichever God you believe in as you may well have gotten away with it. Then try accessing the mail with an app on your phone / tablet / PC etc. If this doesn’t work, then it is likely that you have changed your password, and this new one will work for webmail, but for access through an app or program, you need to create a new ‘app specific password’ purely for this!*. Lastly, I am the least likely person to subscribe to ‘conspiracy theories’, but, for the past month or so, there does seem to have been a detectable uptick in posts on here claiming that their VM email address has been ‘hacked’ and suggesting that VM themselves have been hacked and that they have lost a load of customer data. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, this is just rubbish, there are far more plausible explanations, re-using passwords on different sites etc, the fact that VM don’t (and be honest, never will now) use 2FA for email access. But, this uptick in reports, plus what has happened recently, does make you wonder. Of course, if they had been hacked by some external agent and customer data had been exfilated, and they had failed to report this to the ICO, then they are looking at fines of potentially company-terminating levels, and I’m sure they wouldn’t be that daft! Anyhow, just random, personal thought and speculations, what would I know? * Instructions for doing this are around on various threads as posted by VIP members, oddly enough these VIP forum members do seem all to be strangely absent from this thread, giving any advice or insight into an issue which is, naturally causing concern to a number of VM customers, and in return for various ‘benefits’ are really supposed to step-up and be a first line of support, almost as if they have all been told to stay away, or maybe they all realise what a mess this all is and really don’t want to be involved? Of course, entirely a matter of speculation, I’ll leave any poster on here to think about this themselves and draw their own conclusions!1.3KViews1like0CommentsRe: Loss of Email - F010762348
Oh, not too sure about that, ‘team’ is a collective/singular noun and hence should take the singular form. https://grammarhow.com/team-is-or-team-are/?expand_article=1 Still not really important in the great scheme of things where large numbers of people seem to have lost historic records and the longer it goes on, the less confident I am in these ever coming back! Still nice to see you are “having fun” on these forums (fora?) - laugh a minute on here, it is! Well it’s either laugh or cry!🤔1.1KViews0likes1CommentRe: Loss of Email - F010762348
PHIL1000 wrote: Am I talking to myself? MY ACOUNT IS STILL NOT ACCESSIBLE. Please rephrase your statements that all affected accounts can send and receive emails. I CAN'T!!!!!! Phil, as I mentioned in another post, they CAN’T rephrase the annoyingly, repetitive, robotic, unhelpful (other adjectives are available), copy and paste response, because although we all know that it’s wishful thinking at best, and they know it too, it is screamingly obvious from day 1, that they have all been instructed to say this and nothing other than this - or else start looking for another job, no? In their place, would you do anything other? The other thing, which someone else has already commented on, is the oddly worded phraseology of the statement. Our team are continuing to work flat out to restore historic emails into the inboxes of a small proportion of accounts Other than the poor grammar, should be ‘our team is’, but still, it’s highly open to interpretation isn’t it? On the face of it, it could be saying that ‘only a small number of VM email accounts were affected, and these will all be successfully restored, just give us a bit of time. Which is the reassuring response which a company’s marketing department would want to put across, while secretly, they are all keeping their fingers and toes crossed, while updating their CVs! Of course the same statement could also be construed as saying,’we believe we can only restore the historic emails for a small subset of those who have lost data’, without actually saying that, but the sort of thing that they can point to if and when the brown stuff hits the fan at some point - oh look we did warn you, not our fault if you didn’t interpret it properly! Now the failure of any official VM response clarifying this, does, I feel, speak volumes - it does have all the fingerprints of marketing/legal department speak all over it! Also is it four days of issues or two days? Maybe they can’t count, or maybe, just maybe, they had an issue four/days ago, which resulted in loss of access to mailboxes for some people, and in an attempt to fix this after two days, managed to wipe out a load of historic emails. Still, complete speculation, I’m sure that the engineer, who, Santa Clause like seems to be simultaneously in everyone’s area fixing the issue(s) is doing a stirling job and will be somehow getting everyone’s mail back in due course! Or maybe not, who can tell?1KViews2likes4CommentsRe: Loss of Email - F010762348
SalL wrote: Gloomy prospect; but may well be true unless Virgin can pull this particular iron out of the fire. I'm sure that a lot of the users are like me, trusting for years in Virgin's expertise and supposed good will, and probably like me also not having enough tech knowledge to know how to back up emails routinely even if they had mistrusted Virgin enough to know they had to do this. Current situation is terrible - past emails, important both for business and personal reasons, seem to be gone forever. This could cause havoc in preparing tax returns, just to name one example!! Yes indeed, look I have worked in this industry (not for VM) for long enough, that I really do recognise signs of a really bad potential loss of customer data, type - event, plus a mad senior management scramble to say nothing, minimise the bad news, don’t worry the investors, give strict instruction to the poor souls who have to deal with the fallout and actually answer customer questions to say nothing other than a corporate mandated, bland response’. Sound familiar? Honestly, I think they’ve lost your old emails, and they aren’t coming back. Now I’d love to be wrong, but....1.9KViews3likes0Comments