The company says that it has indeed been calling customers and asking them to confirm their identities by giving up their passwords and home addresses in order to comply with the Data Protection Act. Which, of course, is the kind of thing a company says when it doesn't have a proper grasp of Data Protection Act compliance.

So what's going on? If you're a Virgin Media customer then you may recently have received a call from someone claiming to be a Virgin Media employee conducting a customer services review on behalf of the company. So far, so believable. Then, this unexpected caller will have asked you to confirm your identity by revealing your password. Or your home address. Or both. How do we know? They called me.

At this point, your identity-theft alarm bell may have sounded at the possibility that you were being phone-phished, socially engineered or otherwise being taken for a berk by someone from Nigeria with 419 similar calls already under their belt. Ringing up and asking for such details is a classic scam.