Before Facebook introduced “Message Requests” to let you Accept or Ignore messages from people you are not Facebook friends with, messages from [Facebook] strangers — and spam messages for that matter — ended up in your “Other Inbox.”

With the roll-out of “Message Requests” messaged from these strangers — and spam — end up in a section for “Filtered” messages. This is not immediately obvious and you may be missing messages you actually want to read — personally, I found nothing but spam going back a few years, so no harm done (and a hat tip to Facebook for sparing me the effort of dealing with this trash), but your situation may be different.

How to find your filtered Facebook messages (and a lot of spam)

Find filtered messages in Facebook Messenger

To find these filtered messages in the Facebook Messenger app for iOS and Android, open the Messenger app > tap Settings (lower right corner in iOS or top right corner in Android) > tap People > tap Message Requests > scroll to and tap See Filtered Requests.

You might find messages going back years, most of which is probably spam. It doesn’t hurt to check, though.

Tip: Even if you see nothing on mobile, check Facebook on your desktop too. I found nothing in Messenger and a slew of spam on desktop.

Find filtered messages in Facebook on desktop

Open Facebook on our desktop (in whatever browser you prefer) > click on the Messages icon in the upper left corner > click on Message Requests > click See filtered requests.

You can also go directly to filtered message request in your desktop browser or mobile browser. You can bookmark those for quick access.  

Via: Hello Giggles; YourOtherInbox

Image credit: Arnold Gatilao, Flickr