Virgin Media

Virgin Media

Basic information
Founded	2007 (2021; merger)
Type	Public
Industry	Telecommunication
Official website	https://www.virginmedia.com/

Virgin Media Limited/Virgin Media O2 Limited is a telecommunications company from Britain, founded in 2007, which provides telephone, television and internet services in the United Kingdom.^{[citation needed]}

Anti-consumer practices

Forced DNS usage

Users of Virgin Media's routers aren't allowed to set their own DNS servers. Instead, they must use Virgin Media's provided DNS servers, which are almost always slower and less reliable than Cloudflare's or Google's dedicated DNSes (1.1.1.1 and 8.8.8.8, respectively). The reason for Virgin Media forcing its own DNS servers isn't known, but the servers are used primarily to block sites deemed "inappropriate" by the company.

There are also privacy implications that come with allowing the company to access your DNS queries, as normally it would only be able to see what IPs you are connecting to, but DNS queries also provide exact subdomains.^{[citation needed]}

Mitigation

Set your DNS servers manually on each of your devices to 1.1.1.1 or another reputable DNS provider.^{[citation needed]}