Virgin Media is closing its email service and moving it to Junara
Virgin Media is closing the email accounts it still runs and handing the service to Junara, a specialist email provider owned by the Australian company Atmail. If your address ends in ntlworld.com, blueyonder.co.uk, virgin.net or virginmedia.com, yours is one of them. Virgin Media O2 set the change out on 9 September and says it will write to affected customers in phases, starting this month.
What you have to do, and by when
Three options, and doing nothing is not one of them. Move the address across to Junara. Download your emails and files and set yourself up somewhere else. Or close the account. Virgin Media says you get at least 45 days from the day your first letter arrives, then a further 120 days in which an account can still be recovered if you missed the message or needed longer. Ignore all of it and the account is permanently deleted at the end of that 165 day window.
The money is where it gets less clear. Current Virgin Media broadband, landline or TV customers are offered the first 12 months with Junara free, subject to a 99p transfer fee paid to Junara, and customers who have told Virgin Media they need extra support are offered 18 months. If you have already left Virgin Media and kept only the email address, that free run is not on the table: you would be signing up to a standard Junara plan. Nobody has published what one costs. ISPreview found no pricing on Junara’s own site either. So the one number that decides whether keeping the address is worth it is the number nobody can see yet.
Why an email address is easier to lose than a phone number
Your landline number is protected when you move provider, and there are rules that let you take it with you. Nothing equivalent covers an address ending in the name of a broadband company. That is the whole reason we keep arguing that an email address tied to your provider is a liability rather than a perk. Years of banking, bills and family photographs end up behind a name somebody else owns, and can retire whenever it suits them.
One practical warning. Virgin Media O2 says it will not put clickable sign-up links in any email about this change, and will point people to the official Virgin Media website instead. Take that seriously. A migration announced by letter and email is exactly what a phishing message copies, and anything asking for your password or card details is not from them.
If you would rather get off Virgin Media email altogether than follow it to a company you had not heard of this morning, move while both accounts still work and forward the old one for a few months. Nothing important should be landing somewhere you have stopped looking. And if this has you rethinking the broadband underneath it, our availability checker shows which networks reach your street.