Virgin Media Fixes Email Issue After Users Complain Of Excessive Spam

Virgin Media has apologised to customers who received hundreds of unsolicited emails within a few minutes yesterday afternoon, after a botched service message allowed any recipient to reply to every other email address in the group.

The company blamed the issue on one of its suppliers and stressed that none of its customers’ email addresses had been shared unless they replied to the group. Virgin Media is now confident that the issue has been resolved.

Virgin Media spam

“For a short time yesterday afternoon, a small proportion of our customers received a service email from one of our suppliers which, if they replied-to-all, it was sent to a wider group,” said a spokesperson. “The issue was quickly fixed and we apologise for the inconvenience caused.”

TechWeekEurope understands that only those using a ‘virgin.net’ email address received the unwanted communications and that none of Virgin Media’s cable television and broadband subscribers were affected. It is unclear how many of Virgin.net’s 135,000 subscribers were impacted.

Users flocked to Virgin Media’s support forums to complain of the deluge, with some offering advice on how to filter the unsolicited emails from their inbox. Many users questioned whether their privacy had been breached under the terms of the Data Protection Act.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) told TechWeek it will be looking into the matter.

“We have recently been made aware of a possible data breach relating to emails sent out by Virgin Media,” said a spokesperson. “We will be making enquiries into the circumstances of the alleged breach of the Data Protection Act before deciding what action, if any, needs to be taken.”

Ironically, Virgin Media, which operates an MVNO on EE’s network, is one of the mobile operators to support the GSMA Spam reporting service, which aims to prevent nuisance text messages from spreading across the UK’s mobile infrastructure.

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