Receiving creepy messages on social media from complete strangers seems to have become more and more common, for both guys and girls.
As you scroll through your ‘requests’ or ‘other’ inboxes on your social media accounts, the amount of spam and bizarre messages filling them up can be quite shocking .
Often you are left wondering ‘how did this stranger find me’ and ‘why on Earth are they sending me this message’, which are exactly the questions 18-year-old Katie from Bristol was left asking when one man took creepy to a whole new level.
Last Monday (May 21) Katie was going about her day as usual heading home on the bus at around midday after finishing up at college.
Opening up her Facebook Messenger app after receiving a request notification, Katie was rather taken aback when she read the bizarre message sent from a random man.
It read:
Hi. I saw you on the number seven bus today.
Hi. How are you?
Right… now that is weird and also very disturbing.
Katie reacted as all of us would being both stunned and worried a stranger had managed to track her down after spotting her on the bus.
Who was this man?
She told UNILAD:
When I got the first message on Facebook I was confused because I didn’t know who it was and I was worried how they managed to find me so easily.
Just from a 10 minute bus journey, where we had absolutely no contact and I didn’t even see him, they managed to find me and get in contact with me which I was sort of creeped out by.
I looked at his profile on Facebook to see if I knew him and we have no mutual friends.
Unsure whether to block or message the man back, Katie replied asking ‘what’ and ‘how do you know me, we never met?’
However, the replies she received back were even stranger than the initial messages as it turned out he tracked her down from a glimpse at her ‘name badge’.
The man further messaged Katie:
Did you see me looking at you?
Yeah I was looking at you. You looked good.
I saw your name badge.
I like the look of you.
Understandably freaked out Katie blocked the man with her friends checking his profile concerned by his messages.
Worried that this stranger had privately messaged her after seeing her college ID, Katie warned others to be extra careful.
Speaking to UNILAD she added:
When he mentioned my college ID I was really taken aback because I probably had my ID lanyard around my neck for roughly about one minute after getting on the bus.
It scared me because I got the bus outside of my campus so just from a brief encounter he knew my full name and the college campus I go to.
This sort of thing can happen to anybody so people need to be really careful with carrying round forms of ID.
Speaking to friends I was really surprised at how often this type of event occurs. I was surprised that some of my friends had really similar stories and how worried they became after it happened.
Katie also decided to share her experience on Twitter to show others the dangers of not being careful with forms of identification.
Sharing screenshots of the messages, Katie wrote:
CREEPS. NO ONE LIKES THIS. This dude, who I’m obviously not even friends with on Facebook and have zero mutuals with, saw me and SAW MY COLLEGE ID I WAS HOLDING ON THE BUS while I was going home from college FOUND ME on Facebook.
Literally no words.
While you should take care about having your ID out in public, at the same time maybe people shouldn’t just message strangers saying stuff like ‘I like the look of you’.
Where exactly do you think this is going to get you? A date in a fancy restaurant and a beach wedding in Hawaii? I think not.
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