Quote: Hercules Grytpype Thynne @ 29th August 2017, 11:44 PM
More than a network issue.
For years I have been happy with Virgin (previous NTL), and on reflection it is my son I suppose who is indirectly causing my two now major problems
Virgin had an offer whereby if you took on one of their Tivo boxes they would knock off about £5 a month AND (where my son comes in) give you 200 mbps internet speed. (previously 100, which I was quite happy with). OK, so we now have a nice fast internet speed BUT the Tivo box is crap in that it is technically inferior to the old V+ box.
Secondly, and most piss grippingly, about 4 years ago my son cancelled one of his email addresses and now for the last six months we have been getting a letter from Virgin to say that that email address is being used for spam and that they have changed all our passwords for security reasons. WHY this should all surface 4 years later is anyone's guess and you would have thought a simple phone call would resolve the issue BUT NO. We get promises via an Indian call centre, then one in the UK that Yes, the email address is definitely deleted and we should get no more trouble, but this is all a load of bollocks because here we are six months later and still have the same problem. The outcome being that every week they change our passwords and nobody does f**k all about it. The security department that actions this has no phone number available and the f**king twats we speak to on the phone do not communicate the problem to them - just make empty promises that it will not happen again....................but it does..............every week................for six months.
That sounds like a real pain in the arris Herc and it's one of the reasons I'm worried about entering in to a contract with a supplier because if I had a fault that they didn't seem bothered about it would drive me crazy. If they appeared bothered and promised to sort it out but then didn't that would make me Incredible Hulk crazy.
I had a look on the Virgin Media community board and there are a lot of people with the same issue and it looks like the company has had a widespread problem since they moved their mail servers to a new provider. Since then customers including former NTL customers are finding their accounts being affected by spammers so are constantly being locked out or being forced to change their passwords and nothing they do seems to be resolving it.
It sounds like your sons email address has been spoofed so his account hasn't been hacked in the sense of someone logging in to it but the address is being used as a spoof email address for spammers and this causes a Backscatter. This is when the spam hits the recipient mail servers which say "hang on you're clearly spam so f**k off. I'm blocking this as spam before it can reach the recipient and I'm going to bounce the email back to let you know you failed you loser".
The bounceback ise sent to the innocent spoofed email address (your son's email address) so the Virgin Media mail servers are bombarded with spam bouncbacks and this is known as a Backscatter effect. Virgin Media will have automated systems that identify your son's email address as sending bulk spam and will implement sanctions such as locking out, suspension, deletion etc. It can be very difficult or impossible to resolve this because these kinds of protective measures are hardcoded so it's not like someone can manually change it. Everyone you speak to probably knows this but they have been instructed to gloss over that small fact.
What that means is that because your son's account hasn't actually been hacked it's unlikely changing it's password to or changing the password reminder questions or even deleting it will do any good. It's still worth a try though so if the mailbox is still available to log in to and you can reset the password try that and make it a very tough password. If you can change the account lock out reminder questions do that as well and wait to see if it fixes it. If the account isn't available anymore then obviously you can't do that so I think the only option is something I saw on the Virgin Media boards from someone who said he has seen this issue being reported and ignored for a very long time.
He said that the email service with Virgin Media is a free service which comes with the internet connection so they are dragging their heels recognising they have a big issue to fix on their hands. It might take a bit of effort to do but he said the best option is to probably stop using Virgin Media for email and use a free service like gmail, yahoo, etc. It might be a hard slog to do but in the long run it will probably be less stressful.
