Hi, ​@Kate Sunshine!

A contact is also created if some user sends you a DM.

As for the Unknown Contacts…

• If the IG user still appears on the contact data, check if it still exists. It could be some kind of bot that got deleted and had its data removed.
• Check if the contact opted out and if the data protection regulation in your country demands removing the user data. Some info here: https://help.manychat.com/hc/en-us/articles/14281070595100-Managing-User-Data-GDPR-Compliance
  • Also… if you have some automation to “clean” our contact base, be sure to use the delete function instead of opt-out. This will remove completely the contact data from your account.

Hope this helps...

Hello Fabio,

Thank you so much for your answer. It makes things clearer for me, thank you. There a loads of ‘unknown contacts’ in my list and there is no information about them opting out. When I click on the contacts, I see information that the all opted in via Instagram and their status is ‘subscribed’ but there is no name of the Instagram account and also no picture. Would you recommend me to delete these contacts one by one or is there a better way to get rid of them (and maybe prevent?) them? 

Would very much appreciate your wisdom on that.

Greetings from the Netherlands, Kate  

It's difficult to find out what's exactly causing this to prevent it to happen again… You could try opening a ticket to the support team, they have more ways to investigate it (but it can take some time, and it isn't a guarantee that they have the answer).

And if you just want to remove them from your account, instead of deleting one by one, try this:

• Search for “unknown” contacts
• Select all
• Bulk Actions/ Delete Contact

This will delete them all at once.

But take care, this can't be reverted.

Thank you so much for your answer, Fabio. I tried to delete in bulk as you explained but unfortunately when I enter ‘unknown’ into the search box, there are no results showing up….and that whilst I get around 20-30 of these unknown contacts every single day 

The only thing that works is checking the check box of the unknown contacts one by one and then go up and click on bulk actions and then delete contacts. But this is of course not what I am waiting for….to every day delete unknown contacts manually or otherwise pay for unknown contacts which sum up very quickly. Because of these, I am suddenly paying a lot more for Manychat than I did before...although these are useless to me and that will compound over time of course if I don't delete them manually  I am wondering how a paid service like Manychat can allow that in even….to the disadvantage of their customer.

I think I will file a ticket on this….or do you maybe have another idea how to deal with this?

I very much appreciate your help as this really gives me headaches. I really don't have time to delete those contacts manually every day but also don't have the financial means to just have them compound and pay Manychat for unknown contacts.

Thanks a lot in advance, Kate

Ok… Lets try something…

Go to Settings/ Display and verify if "Show only subscribed contacts” is checked:

This could be the “whole thing".

But if this is turned on, I'd suggest opening a ticket to the support team. They are probably able to clean your contact base with ease.