Has anyone else had a weird facebook message from an unknown person?

[katemiddletonsothermum]

Someone I don't believe even exists has sent me a message on facebook saying that DH is cheating on me. I think it's a spam, like those emails you get from Nigeria saying you've won twenty million quid if you would only give them your bank details.

I've googled her name, it doesn't exist. I'm convinced it's a fake account and I'll be hacked if I go anywhere near her facebook account.

Has anyone else received strange messages from unknown people? Please answer, before I attack DH with the carving knife.

Doesn't sound dodgy to me.
The thing about accepting they'll see you've read it is fine, it's new and does that for people it doesn't think you'll know.

I would want to find out more info, I'd definitely reply and I'm saying that as someone who has had dealings with something similar that wasn't true. (DH received an anonymous letter saying I'd been having an affair came on morning of our wedding! but it was 100% not true. If DH wanted to investigate further I would have totally understood.)

Definitely find out more, it could be a load of rubbish, or they could be doing you a massive favour.

katemiddletonsothermum
Thanks for your messages, both reassuring and otherwise!
1) This AIBU is not "is my husband having an affair?"
2) This AIBU is "will I get hacked if I click on this dodgy fb link?"
3) I'm keeping calm because I'm convinced it's a troll and I don't want to throw a hissy fit the week before Christmas. If there is any ball-slicing to do, I'll do it in the New Year.

In response to clarification about whether you will get hacked if you click on the message, no you will not. As others have said its a new feature Facebook introduced for when someone not on your friends list messages you. There may be more information in the message that you cannot see in the presumably small preview. There may not.

I know you arent looking for opinions about whether the affair accusation is true or not but i agree with the poster who gave a list of options as to why this might happen.

19lottie82
To me there are four possibilities here.

1) He is cheating on you
2) someone is convinced he's cheating on you, but he isn't.
3) he's pissed someone off enough for them to want to fuck him over by telling his OH he's having an affair.
4) you've pissed someone off enough for them to want to fuck you over by telling you your OH is having an affair.

Obviously I don't know you or your OH but statistically speaking only, I'd say it's probably 1.
I'd forget about it being "spam". Someone has sent up this account for the sole purpose of sending you an anonymous message. sorry.

The only thing i would add from experience (working in a specific area) is that the" other woman" can get very upset at xmas time when she realises how little she is going to see her boyfriend over xmas and tries to ruin things(altho the reality is the husband has done that himself ) by letting the cat out the bag in the sad hope he will spend xmas with her instead.

If you havent already i would make sure your own facebook profile is as private as possible ie your posts and pictures are set to friends only etc so that this person cannot see your posts (unless they already are a Facebook friend under their real name -presuming the person that messaged you used a fake account. It all sounds very cloak and dagger but you would be surprised what goes on)

It's not spam, but it's definitely malicious. Someone has an axe to grind, for some reason. It's odd that the sender knows when the party was, although it could be coincidental. Show it to your DH when you feel ready, and gauge his reaction.

I suspect you'll get more messages - this person won't be able to resist, in the absence of a response from you.

Her name is Shanaid Jones. I've had a look at her page and it was created about 5 years ago. She does have friends but they're very random and non-interconnected. Her posts do not have any Likes so this confirms my suspicion that I'm a random target and this is the work of a troll who is data harvesting.

I looked up her page as well. The last post is from 2011, she only has 43 friends, none of them seem to have anything in common. It says she got married in 2010, and one of her posts implies that she's a model. Per a google image search, both of her photos appear to be stock photos.

I'd tend to agree with you, OP, that she's some sort of troll. I don't know what her aim is, but I don't think this is a legitimate page. If she was actually a model, she'd likely be promoting herself more than this. I couldn't find the name of the real model from the botox ad, but I doubt it's her. Googling her name resulted in no real results.

It doesn't look like a real profile to me either. The friends are an odd selection but maybe it is real and she meant to send the message to someone else with your name. Do you have a picture of yourself on your profile, if not she could well have the wrong person.

Looking at her friends list most of them have some kind of psychic connection, maybe she has had a message from the other side about your husband and wants to warn you.

Arfarfanarf - there's only one result for her name so should be easy to find

Profile looks fake to me, too. I'd just ignore it.

I don't think it's spam, I think it's a fake name profile set up to send you an anonymous message. Do you have a commonly used name? I don't and before the age of Facebook someone took the trouble of setting up an anonymous email account (one that you can't send emails back to!) to tell me my boyfriend was cheating on me and also on dating websites, with a link to his profile on a dating website.

I confronted him, he went nuts, protested his innocence, gave me the sulky silent treatment, I believed him. Not long after he dumped me and I found out he was cheating on me with several people. Never found out who sent the anonymous email.

I've took a look too, she doesn't seem like a person to believe.

I'd have to go the 'casual mention' route just to see what reaction I got. As a PP said, the 'even tonight' reference on a night when DH was at a party does add slightly to the credibility.

The likelihood is probably that it is a troublemaker, but fake profile doesn't necessarily = troll.

no one of that name on the electoral register, though that doesn't mean they don't exist - there are 5 Shanaids listed.

to all my lovely detective friends!

But why would anyone do this? What is the point of this message? Is it to get me to click on the "accept" button so that, somehow, she/he/it gets access to my facebook account and, hopefully, any addresses etc?

My facebook page is always in lockdown and my privacy settings are on the highest poss and, apparently, I'm notoriously difficult to find on facebook, so I've been told by people who have tried to find me.

But now I'm cross and upset and I'd put a bottle of champagne in the fridge as DH has now got 2 weeks off for Christmas and we were going to celebrate. But what will happen now is that I will get drunk, confront him, he denies it, I cry, he feels guilty because he's the cause of my tears, he looks guilty and then I shout "YOU FUCKER, WHO IS SHE?" , he denies it again and there's an atmosphere until the fourth of bloody January.

WANKER BITCH!!!! (Troll, not Mumsnet).

Just because you cannot see any posts past 2011 does not mean the profile is not used - just that she has privacy settings set so people who are not friends cannot see her posts?

There's no way that this is data harvesting. You cannot get access to someone's Facebook messages by getting them to click the "accept" button, or through any other means of sending them a Facebook message. It can't happen. The servers are highly, highly secure.

It does look like a fake profile, so, she's either got a second profile that she uses for competitions etc and has sent you the message through that so you don't shoot the messenger, or she's confused you with someone of the same name. I would usually go for the latter but as DH was out last night, and she seemed to know that, I'd suspect his colleagues and probably calmly tell him about the message.

I can absolutely promise you that this isn't a scam, though, it wasn't an attempt to access your account or get your data.

But why would anyone do this? What is the point of this message?

Either to share genuine information with you or to stir up trouble with false information.

Is it to get me to click on the "accept" button so that, somehow, she/he/it gets access to my facebook account and, hopefully, any addresses etc?

HIGHLY unlikely. The 'accept' button is a VERY new feature. Most people won't even be aware of it yet.

Forget the spam/phish/data hijack line of thought. That isn't it.

Actually, looking at her page, there's quite a lot of posts from 2014/2015 with lots of comments and likes.

It still appears to be a second profile, to me, but the posts from 2011 with no likes don't really have any significance.

Cover photo's are always public tho.

Sorry katem but the champagne senario did make me laugh! That's something that would probably happen in my house.

A lot of (apparently normal) people do admit to having anonymous second FB accounts for browsing, competitions, spying on their Mum/DC/ex etc. A fake looking a/c could easily be one of those.

It obviously hasn't been set up just to send you a message, the profile is years old, I don't think you can fake that stuff.

The message doesn't read right to me. "Even tonight" doesn't make sense on a night when he's out at a Christmas party, surely you would only say that if he's said for example that he'd gone to his Mum's or somewhere like that where you wouldn't expect someone to cheat

Jones is a pretty common name but no one else on her friends list has that surname.

I'd be tempted to message her back asking why she sent the message in the 1st place.

I'd message her and ask who she is.

Whether she's willing to tell you, will be very telling.

Yes, Lifesalongson so if the account is years old, then it hasn't been set up just to humiliate lil' ol' me.

Shit, just had a thought. My FexH stopped paying maintenance in May for my DD and I'm taking him to court. He is an absolute f in c*. You don't think it's him, do you? Christ, if it is then he's going to get a damned sight more than a glitter bomb, I tell you. Where can I buy a dumper truck full of shit?

Ah. A nasty ex. That could be the explanation