Virgin Media Discussion Thread

Speed

Speed

Speed

Soldato
Joined
23 Nov 2002
Posts
9,602
Location
Near Bristol
Stu said:
What's a "heavy user category" and how does that impact deals offered?
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In my experience it basically means they know none of their competition can match them at the volumes of data you are downloading, so they are offering you the worst retention deals because you are extremely unlikely to switch. This would apply to pretty much everyone apart from those few lucky people who are in an area that does affordable FTTP, which is obviously extremely rare.

My advice would be to phone up and cancel, don't threaten to cancel just go ahead and cancel. You can always cancel the cancellation (lol) so don't worry. I've also found recently that they have gotten a bit clued up to this tactic and will lie to you saying that "you won't get a call back, we don't do that anymore" but they still do and that will be the way you'll get a decent deal.
 

Nick1881

Nick1881

Nick1881

Soldato
Joined
4 Feb 2007
Posts
9,767
Location
Nuneaton, UK
My 350 service went down this morning, checked the status but nothing was reported. I requested an engineer and it said Friday morning. Within 30 minutes VM called and said an engineer could come in the next 2 hours if someone would be home, I accepted.

Sure enough an Engineer turned up within an hour, straight away he said they were doing upgrades for 1Gb and the service should be restored in the next hour. He was right.

On one hand it's not great that you lose all service while they do upgrades, we run a VOIP phone for business off it. But on the plus side the response from VM was very fast and 1Gb doesn't look far off.
 

Caged

Caged

Caged

Caporegime
Joined
18 Oct 2002
Posts
26,107
Think how much time they could save if they proactively told customers when they would be doing maintenance, or at least told the call centre staff so they knew not to book unnecessary engineer visits.
 

R3X

R3X

R3X

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Joined
9 Aug 2013
Posts
3,553
Caged said:
Think how much time they could save if they proactively told customers when they would be doing maintenance, or at least told the call centre staff so they knew not to book unnecessary engineer visits.
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They enjoy it :eek:

I can't knock VM too badly but I did read another price hike is coming this summer and its still a bit shocking they still have not serviced London fully with fast broadband speeds, its only the Capital I guess :p
 

Rensin

Rensin

Rensin

Associate
Joined
15 Feb 2008
Posts
1,321
I received an email about an hour ago:

We are very sorry to have to inform you that we recently became aware that some of your personal information, stored on one of our databases has been accessed without permission. Our investigation is ongoing but we currently understand that the database was accessible from at least 19 April 2019 and that the information has been recently accessed.

To reassure you, the database did NOT include any of your passwords or financial details, such as bank account number or credit card information.

The database was used to manage information about our existing and potential customers in relation to some of our marketing activities. This included: contact details (such as name, home and email address and phone numbers), technical and product information, including any requests you may have made to us using forms on our website. In a very small number of cases, it included date of birth. Please note that this is all of the types of information in the database, but not all of this information may have related to you.

We take our responsibility to protect your personal information seriously. We know what happened, why it happened and as soon as we became aware we immediately shut down access to the database and launched a full independent forensic investigation. We have also informed the Information Commissioner’s Office.

Given the nature of the information involved, there is a risk you might be targeted for phishing attempts, fraud or nuisance marketing communications. We understand that you will be concerned so we are writing to everybody affected to provide reassurance, guidance and support. We have put all of the latest information on our website https://www.virginmedia.com/help/data-incident, including some advice on how to stay safe online, such as:
• Advice from the Information Commissioner's Office on how you can avoid or report nuisance marketing calls, emails and texts (https://ico.org.uk/)
• How to be vigilant by not providing your personal information to anyone suspicious online, by phone, email or text. If you want more information, you can get it here https://www.getsafeonline.org/protecting-yourself/spam-and-scam-email/
• How you can protect yourself from the risk of identity theft (which is when someone uses someone else’s personal information to obtain goods, services or money without permission) and other types of fraud. The Information Commissioner’s Office has information online here https://ico.org.uk/your-data-matters/identity-theft/
Although no financial, banking details or account passwords were accessed, it is always a good idea to make sure that your passwords are strong and not easy to guess. There is some advice here on how to set a strong password https://www.virginmedia.com/help/how-to-create-a-strong-password.
If having read this email and visited our website you still have questions, you can contact us on 0800 052 2621, but please be aware our customer service advisors do not have any further information at this stage.
Once again, we sincerely apologise for what has happened.

Lutz Schueler
CEO, Virgin Media
 

darael

darael

darael

Soldato
Joined
10 Jul 2010
Posts
6,314
I got the email about an hour ago. I thought it might be a hoax email, but some quick Googling reveals that it isn't. :(

Almost a million Virgin Media customers had their personal details stored on a marketing database that had been left unsecured since last April, the company has admitted.

Records show that the database has been accessed by at least one person from outside the company, Virgin Media said, although it does not yet have any evidence that the information has been used illegally.

No financial details were stored in the database, nor passwords. But it did contain contact details (such as name, home and email address and phone numbers) for users, as well as technical and product information about some of their devices. The company said it has contacted all 900,000 of the affected individuals and told the Financial Times that they make up about 15% of its fixed-line customer base.

“Our investigation is ongoing and we have contacted affected customers and the Information Commissioner’s Office,” Virgin Media said in a statement. “We take our responsibility to protect personal information seriously. We know what happened, why it happened and as soon as we became aware we immediately shut down access to the database and launched a full independent forensic investigation.”

The company warned customers that they may be victims of identity theft as a result of the stolen personal details, and advised concerned customers to contact Action Fraud if they think they have been targeted. The information would also be useful to would-be scammers planning to carry out phishing attacks or fraudulent phone calls, in the hope that they could convince their targets that they are the legitimate representatives of Virgin Media.

Accidental exposure is a common form of data breach, particularly as companies move increasing amounts of valuable information to cloud computing providers such as Google and Amazon. A simple misconfiguration can result in supposedly internal data being exposed to the wider internet as a result, with many would-be attackers regularly scanning for newly exposed “buckets” to see whether they contain valuable data such as personal information or passwords.
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Source: https://www.theguardian.com/media/2...in-media-customers-left-on-unsecured-database
 
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