Virgin Media is ditching its email services and offering customers a window in which to download their data and move to another email provider. The UK's second-biggest broadband provider is closing its own email service and offering users the option of transferring their addresses and mailboxes to Junara, a service operated by Australian email provider Atmail. Customers who want to retain their Virgin Media email address will be invited to transfer to Junara. The first year will be free for current Virgin Media customers, after which they will have to pay to continue using the service. Virgin Media email users will be contacted directly and given 45 days to sign up with Junara, save their data and move to another provider, or allow their account to close. The change affects all addresses ending in @ntlworld.com, @blueyonder.co.uk, @virgin.net, and @virginmedia.com. Virgin Media stopped issuing new email addresses to broadband customers in 2022, citing the growing popularity of dedicated services such as Gmail and Outlook. A spokesperson for the company told The Register: "As we focus and prioritize our investments and resource on ensuring our customers have the best connectivity experience, we have taken the decision to close the remaining Virgin Media email accounts. We're transferring our email service to Junara, a specialist cloud-based email provider owned by Atmail, giving users a clear route to keep their existing Virgin Media email address if they choose to." "We are writing directly to all impacted customers to clearly explain the changes and will provide a 45-day window to either sign up with Junara, move to an alternative email provider, or close their account. To support users through this transition, all current Virgin Media customers wishing to move to Junara will receive their first year of service free of charge, with additional support available for those who need it." Announcing the change in a blog post, Virgin Media O2 chief operating officer Alan Stott said most people now prefer dedicated email providers to accounts supplied by telecoms operators. "By transferring these email accounts to a specialist provider, we can focus our attention and investment on what we're ultimately here to do – provide fast and reliable broadband, mobile, landline and TV services, and give our customers the best possible experience." Virgin Media has not said how many active email accounts will be affected, but their users will have just 45 days to decide whether keeping their old address is worth signing up for a separate service. ®
A prominent US senator is asking the National Security Agency to provide guidance to the general public on best practices for using virtual private networks to secure their communications from spying by foreign adversaries.
VPNs funnel all of a user’s Internet traffic through an encrypted connection to a remote server. The design provides strong assurances that no one between the user and the server can read the encrypted contents. VPNs also allow users to hide their IP addresses from the destination servers they communicate with. While US agencies have previously recommended use of VPNs, none have given recommendations on which ones provide adequate protection.
It's all in the nuances
There are a host of limitations that can undo many of the protections users may think their VPN provides them. For instance, the encrypted tunnel often terminates once a single server decrypts the traffic and sends it on to its final destination. That means the decrypted traffic or the sending and destination IP addresses may be available for snooping by rogue employees or attackers who hack the server. VPNs also don’t encrypt certain types of metadata, such as time stamps, allowing nation-states to build profiles that can be useful in intelligence gathering.
As online services get better at blocking malicious traffic, the attackers and scammers behind them have been forced to find new ways to reach their targets. The alternative of choice is now what are known as residential proxy networks. These systems funnel millions of home Internet connections into a unified network, and the proxy operators allow attackers to route their malicious traffic through these connections for a fee. The online services see only IP addresses with good reputations and geolocations that don’t stand out.
More often than not, the home users have no idea that their connections are being used to facilitate crime and occasionally even nation-state attacks. Users who do know often don’t care much. In exchange for leasing out part of their unlimited bandwidth to others, many get free movie and TV show streaming. Several less tech-savvy people I know who own such digital media players have told me, after I explain how the media players piggyback off their connections, that the bonanza of content is worth it. They find the tangible benefits outweigh the abstract harm they pose.
Infecting already compromised devices
Research published Monday brings the threat into much clearer view. Security firm Plume cataloged a vast ecosystem of malware that preys squarely on users of SuperBox, just one of many media players offering pirated content. These malicious apps can be surreptitiously installed by remote attackers even when the devices are positioned behind a router. While Monday’s deep-dive analysis focused exclusively on SuperBox, Plume warned that dozens of similar streaming devices pose precisely the same threat.
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