Looks like the Virgin.net Email has been compromised.

Oblivion

My Inbox is getting flooded this evening with messages from people I've never heard of. Looks like Virgin have sent out an email to customers and included them all in a BCC list!
Delete them, but don't reply to any of them or you will compromise your own email address.

John259

I've experienced this. Here's my guess as to what happened...

Virgin sent out a genuine message informing customers of a real change, but they configured the message incorrectly.

Any replies got sent to all the customers who got the original message.

Any replies to replies got sent to all the customers who got the original message.

And little fleas have littler fleas....

All rather amusing but as well as the hassle of deleting all the garbage, it leaves considerable doubt as to how genuine the original message was, and most people will have deleted it now anyway.

Virgin - all downhill since Tubular Bells.

Mrs_justjohn

Yes agree - I think original message was genuine, but something has gone adrift in the way it was sent...could Virgin have been stupid enough to BCC in all their customers email addresses. Therefore anyone clicking 'reply all' will be sending their message to ALL virgin.net customers??

Mrs_justjohn

I have rec'd 141 messages and counting...Of course it has allowed every virgin customer with a virgin.net address to spam every other virgin customer :-( and it didn't take them long to realise that they had a free mailing list!

Oblivion

This has to rank as one of the most serious security violations. Virgin had better be offering some mega-compensation for this fiasco!
At least I have Mailwasher to stop them getting to my Inbox but my email addy is now known to heavens knows how many strangers. :mad: :mad: :mad:

Mrs_justjohn

Oblivion wrote: »

This has to rank as one of the most serious security violations. Virgin had better be offering some mega-compensation for this fiasco!
At least I have Mailwasher to stop them getting to my Inbox but my email addy is now known to heavens knows how many strangers. :mad: :mad: :mad:

I don't think they do know your email addy. I can't see the original recipients of the original virgin email. It's only if you are daft enough to reply that everyone can see it as then they receive an email from you!

espresso

Oblivion wrote: »

This has to rank as one of the most serious security violations. Virgin had better be offering some mega-compensation for this fiasco!
At least I have Mailwasher to stop them getting to my Inbox but my email addy is now known to heavens knows how many strangers. :mad: :mad: :mad:

Dream on, you'll get nothing!

Email service status here

hansi

Does this apply to only virgin.net addresses? I have an ntlworld address and that seems ok.

Mrs_justjohn

hansi wrote: »

Does this apply to only virgin.net addresses? I have an ntlworld address and that seems ok.

From what I can see it is virgin.net only

Oblivion

Mrs_justjohn wrote: »

I don't think they do know your email addy. I can't see the original recipients of the original virgin email. It's only if you are daft enough to reply that everyone can see it as then they receive an email from you!

Yes, of course you are right, and I haven't replied to any of them. Still damned annoying though.

John259

Revealing an email address isn't a security breach, all it does is increase the chances of that address receiving spam.