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A sudden Spam attack focused on a company tasked with handling e-mail messages delivered through the Virgin.net platform last week resulting in literally tens of thousands of Virgin Media customers being stranded without e-mail access.
Virgin Media customers left without e-mail after suspected Spam attack. Image: Virgin.
“Since late Tuesday evening, some customers on our Virgin Media DSL service may have been unable to access e-mail or web mail,” a Virgin spokesman explained to the BBC.
“This was due to a suspected spam attack suffered by our e-mail supplier which also affected a number of other ISPs,” he added. “No customers on our cable service were affected.”
The seriousness of the attack, which was described as “large”, saw media giant Virgin forced to adopt a safety-first approach and temporarily suspend a significant quantity of user accounts while it took up arms to combat the nefarious spammers.
According to Virgin, clearing the Spam problem required a full four days of work, which meant that a considerable chunk of its 200,000 UK customer base was left to struggle without e-mail access until the weekend.
Although the spammers have since been thwarted and e-mail services have begun returning to normality, Virgin has warned that affected customers should expect webmail access to take a little longer to fully restore.
“All customers are able to access e-mail again now, though due to a large queue of undelivered e-mail messages, there may be a short delay before some e-mails reach customers’ accounts,” the spokesman said.
Virgin has also been keen to stress that no inbound e-mail messages were lost during the attack.
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