I have a PM from SEVEN years ago!

[MrsPelligrinoPetrichor]

Why? Very odd

Hi @MrsPelligrinoPetrichor - is it a Private Message that you've seen before or has it just appeared?

KatyMumsnet explained a bit more about it on this recent thread

PMs work very differently since the site update, so it may seem like some have reappeared but actually were never deleted.

Rather than an 'inbox' style like an old email system where you only see one side of the communication, we've changed it to be 'conversation' style more like WhatsApp or smartphone text messages. So if you previously deleted one side of the conversation, then the other side may have still remained in the system because the user you were messaging didn't delete their side or vice versa.

Hope that answers your query but if you'd like us to investigate further, please send the details of the message to [email protected] and we'll happily take a closer look.

Just adding a bit more to this - we recently fixed an issue with 'ghost notifications' i.e. notifications showing when there aren't any unread messages. If it only just appeared then this is why and the reason it is unread is because it was never read in the old system.

We appreciate that it's a bit odd suddenly seeing this though and we're discussing a solution to clear the older notifications as they are most likely no longer relevant!

I had the ghost PM notification for ages , clicked on it today and it's a seven year old PM.

It was read in the old system.

It is related to the ghost notification issue - for some reason it was marked as unread in our database which is why it showed up as a notification now. Like I said we are discussing what we do about these really old notifications!

Ok,thanks .

I've got umpteen ancient PMs from years ago that were already deleted, and am having to delete them again one at a time. I can't choose multiple ones from a list and it's taking forever.

Any chance that could be sorted in future?

Hi GingerSplodgeCat. Thanks for raising this. That does sound like something we can look into for the future and would make life a bit easier. We'll put it on the list for discussion.