- If you get a Facebook message from a friend (or a page you’ve messaged), it will go into your regular Messenger inbox at www.facebook.com/messages
- If a message comes in from someone Facebook thinks you might know, it will appear as a Message Request (or Connection request) at the top of your inbox at www.facebook.com/messages/requests
- Messages from non-friends, assumed by Facebook to be spam, are sent to your Filtered Messages at www.facebook.com/messages/filtered
Find your messages on facebook.com
Go to www.facebook.com and click the speech bubble icon at the top of your browser window to get to your messages – it shows Recent by default, but you can click the Message Requests tab (this will show a number in brackets if you have unread messages). Click to view a request and at the bottom you can Accept or Decline it.
Scroll right down to the bottom of all your Message Requests and you should see a link to see Filtered Requests (see screenshot below) – if you have any! You can Reply to or Delete a Filtered message.
To find your Message Requests on mobile, open Messenger and tap People then Message Requests. Scroll down past all your requests and you’ll see the Filtered Messages heading (if you have any!). Tap to Show all.
Tapping the X will decline a message request (or delete a filtered message).
Tapping the tick will move the message to your regular inbox.
Tapping the tick will move the message to your regular inbox.
If you pick up an old winning message and find you’ve missed the claim date for your prize (or there was no claim date!) don’t despair. Send a polite message back to the promoter explaining that you didn’t know about the Filtered Messages folder – they may be sympathetic!
You could also point out that the Advertising Standards Authority recommends that only contacting a winner once is NOT sufficient, and more attempts should be made if there’s no response