How to stop spam emails

Most spam is sent for commercial purposes and come from legitimate businesses and service providers, to encourage you to buy products or service – so email advertising. However, although it can be annoying, we don’t generally treat marketing emails as spam that needs to be blocked.

However, some spam mail can be much more sinister, and it’s this that we do want to block. These are sent by scammers and fraudsters and can contain viruses that hijack a user's computer and mine it for sensitive information, which can then be used to access your online or financial accounts. These viruses can also use your computer to send spam to others whose email addresses it finds in the user's address book, spreading the malware further.

Sometimes you may get emails claiming to come from Virgin Media that are actually phishing attempts. Learn how to avoid phishing.

Virgin Media’s webmail has state-of-the-art technology to help protect you by filtering as much suspected spam out of your inbox as possible.

Your filter won’t normally send marketing emails, newsletters and circulars to mailing lists to your Spam Folder – even though they may sometimes be annoying. Most responsible senders allow you to opt out of receiving them if you want.

What your filter will treat as spam are the offensive, or even dangerous emails. These kinds of malicious spam emails often contain viruses that can damage your computer, or malware that can mine sensitive information from your device. When we can identify them, we’ll filter these out to help keep you safe.

The spam filter also checks to make sure any emails you receive have been sent legitimately by sender shown in the email. If we believe an email isn’t actually from who it claims to be from, we’ll place the message into the Spam Folder.

If I don't use webmail, am I still protected from spam?

Yes, it doesn’t matter if you access your My Virgin Media email through Outlook Express or any other email app, we’ll still automatically delete any spam before it reaches your inbox.

Want to change your spam settings or turn off your filter? See section How to manage My Virgin Media email spam settings

What if I have my own spam filtering software?

While our filter does protect you from suspected spam, you may still want to use dedicated mail filtering software as a further line of defence. You can use your own anti-spam software with the Virgin Media spam filter if you like. It will work as normal, simply adding another layer of protection. So, if by chance some spam does get through our filters, your other software should be able to catch it and dispose of it safely.

We’ll send you a Spambot alert by letter or email if we receive a report that spam emails are originating from a device on your home network. If spam is automatically being sent from your email account, then it’s likely one or more of your devices may be infected with malware.

We realise this is unlikely to be your fault, but this kind of abuse is against our Acceptable Use Policy. If the abuse continues, we might have to suspend or cancel your broadband service.

We’ll send you a Compromised Mailbox alert if we suspect a third party is using one or more of your My Virgin Media email addresses to send spam emails. It’s likely that at some point you’ve inadvertently clicked on a website or email link that contained a virus, and your computer is now infected with malware that has allowed a scammer to access your account.

In this case, we may temporarily block your webmail account.

Use your device’s anti-virus software to remove any viruses or malware by running a scan. If you don’t have any security software protecting your device, then try Virgin Media Internet Security. It offers unlimited online protection for all your devices, and the first 3 months are free.

When the malware has been removed, you should change the passwords for all your online and email accounts.

If a fraudster can get your password using malware, it is highly likely they’ll attempt to use it across as many websites and online services as possible, in the hope that you use the same passwords across your other accounts. That’s what it’s important that you use different passwords for all your online accounts.

When setting your password, you should try your best to pick something that’s difficult to guess. Learn how to create a strong password.

Keep your operating system and application software up to date. Install software patches so that attackers can't take advantage of known problems or vulnerabilities. Many operating systems offer automatic updates. If this option is available, you should enable it.

To help avoid infections on your home network, we recommend that you activate Virus Safe. This is available as part of our free Web Safe services, which can be found on your My Virgin Media account. Web Safe will help you block access to web sites known to distribute Malware.

It is important to provide an up-to-date contact email address, so we can contact you about any issues that may affect your Virgin Media service. To update your contact email, sign in to My Virgin Media and select My Profile.

Check your mail forwarding rules to make sure your emails aren’t being forwarded without your knowledge.

To do this:

1. Sign in to your Virgin Media email
2. Select System Menu
3. Select Settings
4. Select the Auto Forward tab

This will display any email addresses set to receive forwarded emails from your Virgin Media mailbox. If there is an email address you don’t recognise, delete it.

When you’ve made sure your devices are free from infection, you’ll need to change your My Virgin Media password and security question.

To do this:

1. Sign in to My Virgin Media
2. Select the My Profile tab
3. Select Change Password

Make sure you don't use the same password you use on other online sites, such as Facebook or Amazon. If a fraudster is able to get hold of your password for one site, they’ll likely use it to try access as many of your other accounts as possible, hoping that you use the same password everywhere.

You should also make sure your new password is as hard as possible to guess. Need help setting a strong password?

Next, update your security details by selecting a new Security question and answer. This will protect your password from being reset by anyone but you.

Remember, if you usually access your My Virgin Media email through an email application (like Outlook), you’ll need to enter your new password next time you want check your emails.

You should be careful where you enter your email address. Some websites can be used by spammers or fraudsters to collect email addresses, so you should always be aware of where you’re entering yours. You should never share your email address with websites that don’t look official or seem untrustworthy.

If you add your email to official mailing lists, you are also more likely to receive mail that could be classed as spam. While emails from mailing lists are unlikely to be malicious, they can get annoying. You should be able to unsubscribe from any mailing list if you no longer want to receive emails from. To do this, look for an unsubscribe a link at the bottom of the email.

If you mark a specific email as spam or not spam, the filter will move that email to the relevant folder. However, your account won’t remember to filter out future messages from that sender.

If you’d like to mark a sender as spam, you can set up a filter to delete any future messages from their email address. Learn how to use filters on your My Virgin Media email account.

If you think a message might be spam, but it hasn’t been sent to your Spam Folder, it’s best to delete it right away. Learn how to delete messages from your My Virgin Media email account.

If emails from a particular sender are being identified incorrectly as spam, simply save the sender as a contact. When you’ve done this, any messages from their email address will be sent to your inbox.

Learn how to use your address book on your My Virgin Media email account.

To blacklist an email address, do the following:

1. Select an email from the email address you wish to blacklist.
2. select the Action icon
3. Select Blacklist sender
4. Select Blacklist to confirm

Emails from blacklisted email address will no longer arrive in your inbox.

If you’d like to start receiving emails from a blacklisted email address again, you’ll need to remove it from the blacklist. To do this:

1. Select the System menu icon
2. Select Settings
3. Expand the Email options
4. Select Blacklist
5. Select the email address you’d like to remove from the blacklist
6. Select Delete selected

When you’ve removed an email address from the blacklist, emails sent from that address will go into your inbox.

If you’d like to manage your incoming mail in other ways, you can using your own filters. Learn how to set up filters in My Virgin Media Mail.

Organization: 中国互联网协会反垃圾邮件中心 (China Internet Association Anti-Spam Centre):

• Website: www.anti-spam.cn
• Email address: abuse@anti-spam.cn

Organization: Commission Nationale de l'Informatique et des libertés:

• Website: www.cnil.fr
• Email address: N/A

Organization: Nippon Information Communication Association:

• Website: www.dekyo.or.jp
• Email address: meiwaku@dekyo.or.jp

Organization: Onafhankelijke Post en Telecommunicatie Autoriteit (OPTA):

• Website: www.spamklacht.nl
• Email address: N/A (You may use the form on OPTA's website to report spam)

Organization: Commissao Nacional de Proteccao de Dados Pessoais Informatizados:

• Website: www.cnpd.pt
• Email address: cnpdpi@mail.telepac.pt

Organization: Spanish Agency for Data Protection:

• Website: www.agpd.es
• Email address: spacontact@agpd.es