For several days last week, thousands of UK customers of Virgin.net were having severe problems accessing their e-mail following a spam attack on a firm that processes the company’s mail.
According to Virgin, less that half of the 200,000 customers who use the Virgin.net service were affected, but that’s still a healthy amount. Although no mail was lost, users received error messages when trying to access their inboxes. A Virgin spokesman told the BBC:
"Since late Tuesday evening, some customers on our Virgin Media DSL service may have been unable to access e-mail or webmail."
"This was due to a suspected spam attack suffered by our e-mail supplier which also affected a number of other ISPs. No customers on our cable service were affected.
"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."
Normal service was finally restored on Friday.
