The question of how to find out whether someone has blocked you is one of the most sought-after Facebook queries on the Internet. It is considered a blotch on an individual's self-esteem and people do take it as a personal affront.
Best not to be morose, as people may block others out of sheer malice or mischief. Neither are necessarily a reflection of your character.
Nevertheless, the curiosity to find out if you were blocked, or if the person deactivated his or her account, is huge.
Since you cannot control the actions of others, there are methods to satiate the thirst of knowing who may have blocked you.
The third-party applications available on the Internet are not very foolproof, as they only check who is on a friend list and do not entertain the possibility of a deactivated or deleted account. So it is important not to jump the gun.
There are two methods or rather, two cases in which you can find out if you have been blocked on Facebook by someone.
- Method 1: If You are Not a Facebook Friend with the Person
- Method 2: If You are a Facebook Friend with the Person
Contents
Method 1: If You are Not a Facebook Friend with the Person
Step 1. Do a Facebook search
Type the name of the person in your Facebook search bar that appears at the top of your profile page. If his or her name pops up in the search results, rejoice, for you are not yet blacklisted. If the name doesn't show in the search results, it could mean multiple things:
- The person has deactivated his or her account.
- The person has tweaked his or her privacy settings.
- Facebook has blocked the person’s account due to a violation of Facebook’s terms of use.
- The person has blocked you from viewing their page.
Try searching the profiles of some of the person’s friends to see if the individual is in their friends lists, provided their friends lists are public. A positive search response increases the probability that you have been blocked by the user.
Step 2. Use Google search
Log out of your Facebook account. Search for their Facebook profile using Google’s search engine. Type the exact name they use in Facebook.
If Google returns a positive result of their profile activity, open the link in a new tab.
Next, log into your Facebook account and click the same link again in the Google search results. If you are unable to view the profile, you might have been blocked.
However, if their name does not appear in the search results, it’s possible that Google hasn't indexed his or her account because that person opted for privacy in Google search.
Method 2: If You are a Facebook Friend with the Person
It is a tad bit easier to figure out whether you have been blocked if you were once a friend of the user. The procedures are pretty much the same here, too.
Step 1. Perform a Facebook search
Type the name of the person in your Facebook search bar that appears at the top of your profile page.
If the result is negative, then instead of jumping to conclusions, successively follow these steps to refine your judgment on the case.
Step 2. Check display picture in your friend list
Search the name of your friend in your friend list. If the name appears with a default Facebook picture, click on it. If the message "This account has been deactivated" appears, then fret not.
If you are unable to find your friend in your friend list, then the probability becomes higher.
Step 3. Check profile in message history
Dig through the past conversations you've had on Facebook and find the person in question.
- When you open the chat, if the profile picture is the default Facebook silhouette and the name is not clickable, the person’s account might be deactivated.
- If the name of the user appears as “Facebook User”, it signifies a deleted profile.
- If the profile picture is visible, but the name of the friend appears with black ink instead of blue and you are unable to click on the name or send a message, this indicates that the worst has happened.
Step 4. Ask mutual friends
Finally, if nothing removes your doubt, a foolproof method is to ask a mutual friend in confidence to check whether he or she is able to view the person’s profile. If your friend can view their profile and you are unable to, assume the worst.
Review the results of all the methods, one by one. It will help you in reaching a verdict.
In conclusion, it is unadvisable to obsess over a virtual social platform and take everything to the heart. Yes, it’s easier said than done, but when there is a dearth of human interaction, people get offended easily and it culminates into a cyber quarrel that has little to no value over face-to-face interaction, which is hardly as vexatious.
Additional Tips
- With the exception of asking a mutual friend to check the person’s profile, checking your message history is the best way to determine whether you have been blocked.
- If you don’t wish to ask others, then following the above methods in a hierarchical manner will help you reduce the uncertainty to zero.
- If you are not a Facebook friend with the person, then it is hard to determine whether you have been blocked. The method above is fairly accurate but not foolproof.
- Always keep in mind that people deactivate their Facebook accounts all the time. It’s not the worst always.