Oh, those social networks and messaging apps! How many relationships have been ruined and how many hearts have been broken in this digital vortex of human vice! If you suspect your friend or better half has blocked you on WhatsApp, here are a few ways you can check it. And check you should, because some users just resort to stricter privacy settings at some point, and you may not see a change in status, image or messages delivery reports due to this. Long story short, not all spells doom if you see what you think is a blockade sign. Take a deep breath, and analyze the symptoms.
A Blocked contact will not be able to see your profile picture, your status and when you were last seen on WhatsApp. However, you can set up your WhatsApp to hide that information from all your contacts without blocking them, and still keep in touch with them. It will just put an extra cap of privacy over your identity. So, how can you tell whether your contact just switched to a more privacy-focused setting, or blocked you?
Symptoms you have been blocked
- That single check mark. You know how the message gets the double-check mark when it gets delivered to the recipient? If you are blocked by the contact, your messages will never get that double-check mark. Neither will they be highlighted in blue, a read receipt. However, it’s not conclusive an evidence because your recipient may be in a variety of situations that result in the same single check mark. He/she may be out beyond the coverage of their operator; their device may be powered off, lost or stolen. God forbid, something worse might happen. That’s why, look further into the matter.
- You can’t see the contact’s “Last seen” information. Again, they could have simply chosen “Nobody” when selecting who can see their Last Seen status. Inconclusive, but keep digging. When combined, this symptom may mean you’re blocked.
- You can’t see the person’s profile picture. If, all of a sudden, you can no longer see the person’s picture where it once was available, they might have deleted it, or blocked you. Inconclusive, again. If you have assigned a picture from your Gallery to the contact, you will still see it as their profile picture even if the person has blocked you.
- You can’t see the person’s status. This can be both due to the person’s privacy settings, or a sign you’ve been blocked.
- If possible, ask a common contact to check out how he/she views the person’s profile on their end. If you see what another person sees in his/her WhatsApp account about the person of interest, you can confirm or not if you have been blocked. Of course, that friend of yours should also be friends with the person of interest on WhatsApp to be able to see if that data you can’t access is accessible to others. Or, if the person has been active on WhatsApp lately at all.
- Create a new group and invite the person of interest. This is probably the most bullet-proof method to verify you’ve been blocked. Tap Create a group and try to add the contact to it. If you’ve been blocked by this person, you won’t be able to add them to the group. Instead, you will see a message “You are not authorized to add this contact.” There is only one little catch to this method. If the person has not blocked you, they will see you have included them in a new group. This may or may not shed the light on your intentions to verify if they’ve blocked you, but you will know the truth.
- Finally, you can use another phone number, unknown to the person of interest, to see what information about this contact is available to public, provided you have WhatsApp on that device. If the contact’s profile picture, or last seen, or status is seen to the public (not necessarily all of them, can be just one) and you don’t see any of them in your WhatsApp, then yes, you’ve been blocked.
That’s about it. We sure hope you never get blocked by the ones you care about. Yet, even if you got blocked, cheer up and remember life is a box of chocolates. No luck this time, but hey, you might win a jackpot with the next one! Never give up on yourself.
