Your friend is spot on talking about the fact that we all have two different inboxes for messages on Facebook, one for people who we have identified as our Facebook friends, and another for everyone else. I’ve learned to be leery and keep an eye out for messages in my “Others” mailbox, but lots of people are clueless about its existence and never check.
The result is that while you’re likely getting the occasional spam message into Facebook (yech) you are also getting legitimate messages and communications from people who you aren’t friends with but with whom you’d likely want to respond. Which, of course, you can’t do if you don’t know that you have this secret shadow inbox.
Now that you’re aware it exists, however, it’s not too hard to find it and check to see what’s coming in. Better yet, once you know where to look, you’ll find it’s easy to keep an eye on so in the future any incoming messages will be seen within a day or two, not weeks or (I kid you not) months.
It all starts with the “Messages” entry on the main navigation:
Click on that, as you have probably done hundreds of times, but this time really look at the top of the information displayed:
As I’ve highlighted, you want to find and click on “Other”. When you do, there’s a whole ‘nother mailbox displayed with messages that you likely have never noticed before:
I have no idea who Ealhx Kimberly or Chris Smith are. That’s why their messages ended up here.
Look at the top right. See that “More” link? Click on it and you’ll find that there are even more mailboxes:
Yup, turns out you can find email that you thought you’d deleted by clicking on the tiny “x” next to it. Why? Because that archives messages and now you know how to find your archived email mailbox on Facebook.
Oh, and when you’re reading a message, whether it’s in your regular mailbox or your Other mailbox, there are a bunch of options you should be aware of that are accessible from the gear icon, as shown:
As you can see, the one I use a fair bit is “Report Spam or Abuse…” because, well, most of what I get in my Other mailbox is spam of some sort or another. How it arrives I don’t really understand, but it does.
So that’s it. Now you know all about the Other mailbox and how to work with it. Good luck!
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