Virgin Media's email hardware failure locked users out of inboxes for over two weeks

From 19 June 2023 some Virgin Media email users could not open their inboxes. Two weeks later, Virgin Media said everyone could again send and receive emails, but a small proportion still could not view messages from before the disruption. The company runs @virginmedia.com, @ntlworld.com, @blueyonder.co.uk and @virgin.net services.

In a 23 June email to customers, Axel Wehrle, director of customer service, said a part of the hardware that manages the mailbox platform had failed, which overloaded the servers. Virgin Media said all emails were 'safe and secure' and that fixing the issue was taking longer than anticipated. It apologised 'unreservedly' and did not say how many users were affected.

A retired IT systems designer told the BBC that disaster recovery plans at large organisations would normally resolve such a situation in hours. Customers described years of messages and contact lists at stake. Virgin Media reported the email issue to the Information Commissioner's Office but said it was not a data breach and no data was accessed or compromised.

Some users lost access to inboxes for over two weeks and to historic emails for longer; the number affected was not disclosed.

A hardware failure in the mailbox platform overloaded the servers, according to Virgin Media's own customer email.

Restoration of historic emails took longer than the company anticipated, extending a service disruption into weeks.

Virgin Media gave no date for a fix or figure for users affected, which left customers fearing permanent loss.

The BBC quoted an IT professional saying disaster recovery plans typically restore service in hours, not weeks.

Email is a customer's archive, not just a pipe. Recovery plans for a mailbox platform should be measured in hours, and silence about scale erodes trust.

Virgin Media said teams were working to restore all historic emails as soon as possible. It reported the incident to the ICO while stating that no data had been compromised. The BBC article does not say whether all emails were recovered.