back to article Virgin Media switches to Gmail

Virgin Media will today begin moves to transfer its almost four million broadband subscribers to Google's email service. The three existing in-house email platforms will be gradually decommissioned. At first only new customers will be invited to join the new outsourced service. Once 20,000 are signed up and the system is …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    shirly

    transferring all of a UK based user's personal emails, to an American company like google would be some sort of breach of the UK's data protection laws without gaining your express permission (ie no you didn't opt out to something you didn't know about so we did it anyway bollocks)

    Although that particular condition may have been scrapped, it has been nearly 10 years since i studied data protection law.

  2. Lee Dowling Silver badge
    Thumb Up

    @Nic Evans

    I couldn't agree more - why anyone uses ISP-provided email is beyond me. You can get domain names for as little as £1 a year or less, and even if you just use them for email forwarding it's worth it.

    I picked up on this way before I started using email in earnest all those years ago and own several domains that redirect email to wherever I want. I even "host" addresses for relatives and friends that want them by redirecting mum@mydomain.com to my mother's email address (because she can never remember it and doesn't want the hassle of emailing EVERYONE she knows when she decides to change ISP).

    If anyone ever considers changing email, just register a domain name first and give THAT address out to people (you can even have, like, junk_mail@mydomain.com etc. for competitions and so on). Then you'll NEVER have to change the email they have for you ever again - just move the forwarding or, if you're unhappy with the nameserver service, move the domain to a different host.

    Case in point - I have been using Hotmail since before it was "fashionable" to use webmail. I even paid for their extended service at one point. Then they decided to break Opera several times with no possibility of a fix forthcoming. Logged into three domain name control panels, changed the forwarding to a GMail address. I didn't have to tell anyone I'd changed and, after 24 hours, everything arrives in GMail, there were no lost emails (but some still ended up in Hotmail for a little while) and my Hotmail account now sits empty. And when GMail do something to annoy me, I'll just do the same again to somewhere else, or to my own hosting or whatever.

    My wife does this (sends through to our ISP's POP3), my brother (hundreds of redirections for various purposes to various people), random members of friends and family (they "borrow" email addresses at our domains, etc.) for years. I host websites on the domains, so the email is "free", but you can get forwarding for next-to-nothing these days.

  3. Richard Cartledge
    Thumb Down

    Spy in your email

    I set up a google mail account because I wanted to send an anonymous email to my local council.

    As soon as it was sent, adverts for Council 'jobs' for Diversity Engenderment Coordinators and suchlike appeared in banners around my inbox. I would never trust my email to such an outfit.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Virgin email

    I've had a Virgin email account for just over a year now, and I'm bemused about how much whining there is about advertising in gmail. The first time I checked my virgin mail account (within a week of setting the connection up) I had a number of emails - from companies who must have bought or been sold my email address through Virgin. If this isn't advertising then I don't know what is - at least with gmail it's targeted. With Virgin it's from companies who I never do business with now, because they continue to spam me with their trash -- Screwfix are you listening?

    For the rest of the emails that I get, their "filtering" of spam is as abysmal as BT's email used to be before they sorted it out. To be bluint any email system would be better than what they offer right now.

  5. Blacklight

    So, credentials then...

    So how will this work?

    I have a VM account (accessed via POP3) AND a Gmail account.

    Both have different user names. My GMail account picks up my VM email, as I've chosen to give GMail my creds.

    What happens when this moves? Do I suddenly get two GMail addresses? Can I get one GMail address to access the other and aggregate my email for me? Are VM going to pass my VM login details to Google? (as of course, we'll all need to just carry on logging in with the same user/pass combinations) - or are they going to be running some massive LDAP auth thing?

    *head/desk*

  6. dreadful scathe
    Thumb Up

    aah the irony

    have been with telewest/VM since 2000 and switched to Gmail years ago for all my mail needs - google offer a much better email service (and yes you can easily get all your messages offline if you wish) not that VM are "moving" to gmail the web app (lol at the thought) - it will still be up to you what client you use when you use googles mail servers instead of virgins.

    @ Simon Langley

    "I was a satisfied Blueyonder customer and then they were taken over by Telewest. I was a satisfied Telewest customer then they were taken over by Virgin. "

    Slightly confused aren't we? Telewests broadband was called "cableinet", they rebranded it as "blueyonder", they then merged into VirginMedia. Simple as that. I agree though, there is no doubt VM is a very badly organised company.

    But for me, other than the fairly rubbish customer service (they managed to delete ALL my email accounts and mails in a house move and it took a week just to get them to reinstate one of them due to an "illegal" name) there is little downtime (on avg theres a few hours per year) and i do get the full broadband speed as advertised (last 2 being the only important things to me)... by reading some comments though, i think i may just be lucky :)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @ Anon "Do you actually think PGP is any good in GMAIL??? "

    Yes, sure, google could theoretically brute force a (single) PGP message if they devoted ALL their CPUs to it for a few decades, assuming it is properly encrypted (key size, etc).

    As for bypassing it, no, they can't, it is encrypted when they receive it, that is the point of PGP.

    Please learn how PGP works before posting.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    Adverts?

    Dont people remember. VM's webmail serves you adverts anyway. And is terribly slow and their servers dont work.

    At least theyre moving to gmail which has some very fast services. Lot of extra options. And the teeny tinest advert you have ever seen that just links to a keyword inside your email. Instead of the big flash one that VM server up.

  9. Damien Thorn
    Thumb Down

    predictions:

    Are new users of virgin being given .gmail email extensions? or have virgin customised them.

    Try signing up to ebay with a gmail account.

    Try signing up to my sites with a gmail account.

    In fact try signing up to most sites with a gmail account.

    I use virgin, part of the terms and conditions say we must check our emails reguarly, i havent had access to mine in months, and they have no idea why not.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "Do you actually think PGP is any good in GMAIL???"

    Bit overly paranoid there. As long as your password/phrase is decent it would take even google a very, very long time to break it.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    What about SMTP?

    I use my VM account for sending mail from my domain and like it to be tagged from my domain not @gmail or @viginmedia.

    I cant get a proper fixed ip from VM and as such a proper reverse DNS entry so that my exchange box can send out for itself.

    Unfortunately with the distance from the phone exchnage DSL broadband is .5 Mbit at best so I'm left with no viable alternative to Virgin.

    Anyone recommend a paid smtp provider I can use when they finally pull the plug?

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Google corporate email services

    Okay, I've had some experience of talking with Google about corporate email services. So here's what I've learned.

    1: All email belongs to the recipient. Unless deleted it remains on Google's servers until the account is terminated. If the company chooses to end its agreement with Google they have 1 year to migrate data to a new provider and Google offers tools to do this.

    2: Targeted advertising is an option which is usually switched OFF for corporate users. Of course they can choose to allow it for their users.

    3: Data protection. Google is a party to the EU / US 'Safe Harbor' scheme which means that personal information held outside the EU is protected to the same degree as required under EC legislation.

    HTH.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Interesting

    It's interesting that blueyonder mail is apparently unreliable. I was a long time blueyonder customer (and obviously subsequently telewest) until I moved to an area with no cable in 2005. In all the years I was on blueyonder I don't recall any significant mail outages. So what we have here then is a service that worked just fine until Virgin took over and "improved" the service.

    Take a working system mess it up to the extent that it's no longer fit for purpose and then move all your customers to a service that is free anyway. The best bit of the whole thing though is that they've picked a service which has had some well publicised problems itself.

    When I first moved from cable to DSL I missed it. Having seen the way Virgin treat their customers I'm glad I couldn't bring cable with me.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    @Damien Thorn

    er..what exactly is your point? I don't understand what you are saying?

    Every website/service I am signed up for (including The Reg, eBay, 4OD, F1 live timing, skype etc...) I have used one gmail account or another. I have never once encountered a problem.

    Are you sure you're reading it right?

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    @What about SMTP?

    You can send mail as if it were from your domain from gmail. Go to settings and add a pop3 account then when it asks if you want to be able to send form this address say yes, follow the instructions in the confirmation e-mail and you are sorted.

    When sending just hit the drop down & select the mail address you wish to send from.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Go the whole hog?

    For ISPs to support Gmail using the customers chosen domain rather than using an extension of the ISPs domain.

    Switching ISP always seems to have that pain about changing and notifying change of email address.

    Personally I hope the world and its dog drop POP based email soonest making IMAP a universal norm.

  17. Vicchi
    Alert

    @dreadful scathe

    "Slightly confused aren't we? Telewests broadband was called "cableinet", they rebranded it as "blueyonder", they then merged into VirginMedia"

    Telewest's original cable internet offering was Cableinet and was, IIRC, brought into Telewest as part of the acquisition of Cable London. Cableinet was rebranded as BlueYonder long before the Telewest/NTL merger and subsequent rebranding as Virgin Media.

    I was a Telewest customer for 8 years before Virgin Media and my cable internet was always called BlueYonder.

  18. kb9aln

    What's In It For Google?

    I just went through this with my ISP here in the states (TDS Metrocom). We had reliable E-Mail service with no problems and had web access as well. I seldom used the web access, only when I was not at home and wanted to check my mail. Pop3 is used at home to collect my mail and I work off-line.

    My main objection has been that I never agreed to this and never wanted it. I have to ask why it was done? I can only speculate that there is some profit in it for someone, possibly everyone but me.

    One of the first problems I experienced was that Google mail requires secure POP3. My old E-Mail client did not do this (or so I thought, turns out it does when you know the secret incantation). And then there was reconfiguring the firewall on my DSL gateway to allow secure POP3.

    I would also say that Virgin Media customers should look over their Google mail settings carefully. By default, Google mail does not listen when a pop3 client tells it to delete copies of your mail when that pop3 client collects it. You need to access your account and set this up under POP3/IMAP settings. Otherwise, they appear to stay there forever.

    And another problem is that when you do this, the "deleted" mail gets moved to the "Trash" folder instead of being fully deleted. I have not had the time or inclination to investigate if this done for you on a timed basis, or if you have to do it manually. I just log in via the web interface and do it myself.

    In the end, this is a series of hassles which I did not need. I never asked for it, and wonder why Google is so anxious to provide E-Mail service. Apparently there is something in it for them, otherwise they would not go through the trouble of providing the service.

    I wonder how reliable Google Mail will become when they have all of the world's E-Mail to deal with?

  19. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Anything better than VM mail? Yes, but no thanks all the same!

    Having been a Cable/NTL/Virgin customer for donkey's years, I can say that their email system has always been a complete abomination....as have all their tangled and screwed up web services.

    When VM started updating their servers I thought, aha, at last, some progress, but I didn't see the GMail push coming; I was, naively, expecting great reforms. Doh! Sucker punch there.

    Personally I don't like GMail at all, even with the 7Gig of 'free' storage. Given the choice I much prefer Yahoo! mail. But that is irrelevant because I dumped unreliable ISP email years and years ago and have managed my own mail through paid for hosting services. Of course that means extra expense, but if you want reliability there's no other choice.

    And, to finish, given the price you pay for VM's broadband services, I think VM dumping all their customers onto GMail is a bloody cheek. A free GMail account? Thanks, but no thanks. Glad to have saved you the money, not.

  20. MarkMac
    Flame

    Worse service... actually...

    Smaller mailbox (currently we get 10MB), potentially scanned by 3rd party for demographics analysis, using a service well-known for being a spammers heaven, in an offshore jurisdiction with poor DP laws. Great move.

    I block all mail from google's servers because virtually all the mail I get from them is phishing and spam using throwaway accounts, and all my real contacts have proper email. I strongly suspect I'm far from alone in this. So virginmedia customers may have some issues.

    But maybe we do VM a disservice - maybe in reality they'll be deploying google's technology but using their own hardware.

    Somehow I think not.

  21. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The day my ISP outsorces my mail to GMail...

    ...is the day I change ISPs. This is ridiculous. One has to wonder how much Google is paying Virgin Media to screw its customers over. If Vigin cared about it's customers, they's simply replace their piece of crap mail system with one that works.

  22. Mike Bronze badge

    from address...

    currently i can send email through virgins servers with my own from addresses (my own domains), not a problem

    when they switch to gmail this will apparently not be possible, to those saying gmail lets you send from your own domain, no it does not - even if you stick multiple domains in a single google apps account all outbound email is associated with your account on the primary domain

    if you add alternate "from" addresses it changes the from address, then adds a "sender" header with your original gmail account in it - which anyone who has ever tried emailing companies like this will know outlook shows the "sender" address and relegates "from" to just showing "on behalf of" next to it - with replies etc going to the "sender"

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    @Worse service... actually...

    Sorry when did 7GB become smaller than 10mb?

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    Almost correct

    "Telewest's original cable internet offering was Cableinet and was, IIRC, brought into Telewest as part of the acquisition of Cable London. Cableinet was rebranded as BlueYonder long before the Telewest/NTL merger and subsequent rebranding as Virgin Media."

    "Cableinet" was the brand name for Telewest's original dial-up Internet service launched in 1996. When Telewest launched their broadband service in 2000 they rebranded all of their Internet services as "blueyonder". A migration of cableinet email addresses to the blueyonder.co.uk domain was completed in 2002.

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    kb9aln - What are you talking about?

    So you don't like the fact that Googlemail archives old mail... online back ups are usually very expensive, Google's is free. And so what, they scan your demographic properties and what?

    And the "secret incantation" you speak about are "settings", one off settings, that are set once and then forgotten about.

    What exactly is your IT interest, why do you even read El Reg?

  26. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    unfortunately

    its a sign of things to come, VM seem determined to go down the old NTL business model of outsource everything and then you cant be blamed for problems that arise, you merely blame the outsourced company.

    a sad but common attitude these days.

    though i think everyone has now realised that NTL buying telewest was the beginning of the end, no new shiny wonder ISP emerged, just a monster NTHell which is what everyone feared all along.

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    from address

    "currently i can send email through virgins servers with my own from addresses (my own domains), not a problem. When they switch to gmail this will apparently not be possible, to those saying gmail lets you send from your own domain, no it does not - even if you stick multiple domains in a single google apps account all outbound email is associated with your account on the primary domain"

    Understanding the exact details of how Gmail handles email addresses when using email client software is quite complex, however the behaviour with Outlook can be summarised as follows:

    1. The Google Account name is always present in “Return Path” field of the SMTP headers. It also appears in the “Sender” field when this is present. It appears in the “From” field when a user defined Google “Send As” entry is not defined.

    2. The user defined Outlook field “E-mail Address” is never used when sending email using Gmail SMTP servers. The Google “Account Name” is used where no other user specified Gmail “Send As” addresses are defined. Where a user specified Gmail “Send As” exists and is set as the default “Send As” address for the email account this is used in preference to the Google “Account Name” and the “From” field may appear in the form of “From: <Google Account Name> on behalf of <Google Send As Address>” in some email clients.

    3. Where an Outlook “Reply To” value is specified this will take precedence over any specified Gmail “Reply To” value. If an Outlook “Reply To” value is not defined then any specified Gmail “Reply To” field associated with the default “Send As” address is used. If neither an Outlook “Reply To or Gmail “Reply To” exist then the Gmail “Send As” address is used if specified. If a user defined Gmail “Send As” address is not defined as the default “Send As” address then the Google “Account name” is used.

    4. With standard SMTP servers users can send emails using Outlook from multiple “From” email addresses by setting up multiple Outlook accounts using the same mailbox login credentials for the outgoing SMTP server but different email addresses configured in the Outlook “E-Mail Address” field. As this field is not used by the Gmail service the default Gmail “Send As” address configured inside the Gmail Webmail interface is used. With Gmail a user can not send emails via Outlook by using multiple different “From” email addresses configured as separate Outlook accounts, using the same mailbox login credentials for the outgoing SMTP server. This is because the “From” address used is that of the default Gmail “Send As” address configured for the email account within the Gmail webmail and interface not the “E-Mail Address” configured for each separate Outlook account.

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Up

    Smart move

    Seems like a smart move. I'm a virgin customer and they're not too bad. I've never used the Virgin ermail account. Why? Because Gmail is far superior. Its probably the best mail service in the world. You can work online, offline, access it from any phone, search incredibly quickly. Tons of features.

    If you're paranoid about evil people reading your email use hushmail, they've been doing some good things for years.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bleatings about Virgin Media and "free" Gmail accounts

    Virgin Media is not getting "free" GMail. They use the partner edition, which is a paid option. The costs are not published because they vary from partner to partner. However, the business edition for example costs $30/user/year in exchange for phone support and guaranteed 99.9% uptime SLAs. You can be guaranteed that a partner edition is definitely costed on a similar model. So it is not about Virgin Media dumping their users on a "free" service. If anything, Virgin Media is paying premium to make sure their mail doesn't die again, and if it does, it comes back up pronto. Their infrastructure costs will drop, generally the Virgin Media mail will improve in stability...

    In addition, you can run multiple gmail accounts and have each other send mail to each other... or retrieve mail from each other. It is not a problem at all. It's just that the boxes holding your mail sit next to each other on the same circuits.

    Of course, what is annoying is that all those TeleWest/NTL/Virgin Media spam geniuses sending mail will possibly bring GMail's servers into disrepute... not something us businesses on Gmail already appreciate (especially when they spam through Gmail itself).

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Alert

    Come on...

    to the people complaining about Google skimming through their emails' text to place relevant ads. Those are computers analyzing text, why should one be bothered by it? I think we all take this privacy thing far too seriously. What's on our emails anyway that can't be shown to a chunk of parser code? Plans to rule over the world? Secret weaponry designs? Most of our email is so dull and uninteresting that even if it was made public to anyone in the internet no one would bother to read it, our lives are not as important as some people seem to think...

  31. Simon Langley

    I meant NTL not Telewest - VM still suck though

    @dreadful scathe

    You are quite right it wasn't Telewest is was NTL.

    Blueyonder/Telewest->NTL->Virgin was how I recall it went.

  32. Anonymous Coward
    IT Angle

    Do most of you *really* work in IT?

    How many of you have gone through puberty? This is all *very* basic stuff chaps. Use Google to find out what POP, IMAP and SMTP are. Search Google for "gmail outlook" or "gmail windows mail" or "gmail mail.app", or, I guess you have got the picture by now. Beside, I imagine that VM will add instructions (which exist on the main gmail site) to their help pages.

    Personally, I've never had a serious problem with Virgin Media, still show me a telco that doesn't suck in some way and I'll find you a dog that doesn't smell. Gmail has pretty much the best spam filter out there...

  33. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    lack of privacy

    I already have a gmail account...which is kept well away from my home account. wil the normal gmail rules and privacy invasion be valid for these transferred accounts too? this is bad. very bad.

  34. Steve Liddle
    Happy

    gmail and adblock works :)

    Got a few gmail accounts, the only targeted adverts are one liners at the top of the email

    eg

    one recent email is about a castle that plan to visit with some friends near skegness, the advert is for Beit Hall Hotel in Kensingon, ie nowhere near the place I want to visit, buckingham palace is apparently very close and that must be the reason for the advert :)

    Not worried that gmail stores the emails on it's servers, more worried if phorm and the govt gets it's hands on the data only to lose it or let anyone who wants to look at it, do so :(

  35. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Very Good Move

    IMHO. I was recommended to GoogleMail a while back by professional colleagues. Their spam filters are damn good at dealing with the junk, and I really don't know what people are referring to when they say that gmail will increase the junk they get. Why is it so alarming that a company wants to advertise its own products then?

    Now if VM had made an announcement that they were handing the keys for their mail servers over to use hotmail then it would have been something to be alarmed about. Which introduces my Paris icon, one hot male and all that.....

  36. iamapizza
    Joke

    GMail reliable?

    >Google's email service has been seen as relatively solid since its launch in 2004

    Reliability and GMail? When the hell did that happen? Is GMail out of beta yet?

  37. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Another Phorm moment for Virgin?

    If I recall correctly, VM don't have my consent to intercept my email other than is necessary to provide the email service.

    Therefore, I suspect that if they transferred the service to Google and the latter started scanning messages in order to target advertisements, there would be a breach of RIPA. I'm not sure who would have broken the law, but without my consent, I'm pretty sure it would be broken.

  38. Simon Painter
    Heart

    whine whine whine

    Other ISPs do exist you know.

    bethere.co.uk

  39. DR

    @So, credentials then..

    . By Blacklight Posted Wednesday 15th April 2009 12:07 GMT

    So how will this work?

    I have a VM account (accessed via POP3) AND a Gmail account.

    umm, the article says, you keep your existing virgin, ntl, blueyonder ect addresses, just the mail is served from Gmail servers, (so you logon as whoever@virginmedia.com, or whoever@blueyonder.com to get to your virgin media mail, and you log on as whoever@gmail.com to get to your gmail accout...

    with regards changing settings, I'd be rather surprised if Virgin didn't just make this seamless by changing their DNS records to point to a different end point.

    eg smtp.virginmedia.com would end up pointing to the same address as smtp.gmail.com and you -the end user wouldn't have to change anything in your settings, you still think that you get the service from Virgin, just the backend is hosted by google.

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    But will webmail users..

    get their emails scanned by Google or Virmin for targetted adverts. I am told this happens with the free Gmail. I dont know cos I dont use it so if someone can clear the facts ?

  41. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    3rd party Cable ISP's over VM cable dont exist any more

    "By Simon Painter Posted Thursday 16th April 2009 10:09 GMT

    Other ISPs do exist you know.

    bethere.co.uk "

    really, so tell us Simon, when exactly did Bethere start supplying their ISP services over UK cable then ?

    did they buy up the old AOL cable contract and force Virgin Media to continue that old 3rd party service......

    i dont think so.....

    although if the old AOL could put their ISP services on UK cable then why dont the others today ?

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