Instagram question - very creeped out

[bluerivers27]

Not sure where this should go but here goes..

I woke up to a instagram message request in my inbox today of a travel agent, who’s staying at the hotel I stayed at 4 months ago.

she messaged saying this..

”Hey lovely, I just came across your account from your insert hotel here tags! We are currently staying here and really loving it!
Did you guys have an amazing time? We are looking to rebook for next year but just wanted to ask who you guys booked your trip with? X

I have a private account, I’ve never tagged the hotel’s account or location but I have uploaded photos of them, with no mention of the hotel. How the f did she know?

It's not a mlm thing is it? I know there's some travel ones and mlm bots can be sneaky and manipulative at times.

Sounds like some sort of weird travel mlm thing the way she's worded her message, very over friendly and mlm-y. I'd be freaked out too

Has she replied yet?

Nope! I sent another message asking her to please let me know as I'd rather actually know if my information has been sold or not because 1) it's creepy and 2) if the hotel is selling my information to random travel agents from the UK even though it's overseas I'm going to be really angry

She has just gotten back to me saying that she seen me like a post on their account (6 weeks ago) which was asking what was everyone's favourite restaurant at the resort - still creepy, nonetheless.

I am going to change my username to something with just my first name - can anyone give me any examples or variations they have as their username? Like do you maybe have first name, surname initial, or something entirely different?

Ahh, after your update and other people mentioning MLM im about 99% convinced this is one of them - she must speand ages trolling through hotels pages messaging people who have interacted with them hoping to get a converstaion going. Then she can drop in "Well hun, if you ever want to go back I can do you a great deal. In fact why don't you become a boss babe and earn money from home in your spare time getting your friends great deals on holidays"

I think she will be trying to sell you something.

I had a strange WhatsApp message a couple of months ago from a woman. Very chatty etc. I assumed she had accidentally sent me a message by typing in the wrong number. I replied and told her this. She apologised, still very chatty etc.

To cut a long story short she was selling sex. I have a non-gendered specific name and she presumably assumed I might be interested.

I really wish there was a way on WhatsApp where you could block anyone not in your contacts from sending you messages.

I'm missing the creepy factor, that's the nature of social media. If you're on any platform where people you don't know can message you, you can't be surprised if someone does

Tbh I think you're over-reacting to something quite normal

You can call yourself whatever you like SM, change your name to anything but that won't stop someone sending you a message if you have that facility enabled.

@AllThatFancyPaintsAsFair the creepy factor was that I got a random message from a random individual asking who I booked a hotel with, when I have never tagged the hotel, had a public profile, tagged even the city it was in, only uploaded the view of the beach from the hotel and not the hotel itself - if you went out for food, and some random messaged you on Instagram (while they can’t see your profile) saying “how was your dinner” - I think it’s the same and very creepy!

She’s trawled through the people who have interacted or liked that hotel. Then when she finds people who have a photo of the hotel on their profile, she’s contacting them under the guise of “do you like it?” but really it’s just a fishing expedition to see if she can drum up any business for her travel agent. I commented on a hotel page on Facebook once and had two different “personal travel consultants” message me asking if I needed any help booking a holiday. It’s just that sort of thing.

It's will be automated spam essentially. Some people won't have booked and will have just interacted with the page, she doesn't know you stayed, it's just mass spam and some people like you will have and she hits lucky.

Not the same thing, but I had a creepy facebook experience recently. On the jubilee bank holiday I was shopping with DD, at one point we were in M&S as I had a gift voucher to spend. We were in the kids department looking at some Percy Pig pyjamas but they didn't have her size so we didn't get them. A couple of days later I started getting facebook adverts for all different Percy Pig related items. My phone was in my zipped up handbag in its case the whole time, there's no way it could have heard what we were saying and I haven't shopped online for Percy items so how did it know what I'd been looking at in the shop?

if you went out for food, and some random messaged you on Instagram (while they can’t see your profile) saying “how was your dinner” - I think it’s the same and very creepy!

Obviously people use SM different ways, I wouldn't find that creepy either, maybe we have different definitions of the word. Not something I would do but not something that would bother me either

I have a small number of instagram followers and don't post loads and I regularly get random messages, I just block the senders