How to Tell if Someone Blocked your Phone Number

Have you ever tried reaching out to someone on their cell phone number and it just seems to you that you keep reaching a dead end? Have you ever thought of the possibility that it is deliberate from the person’s angle; maybe he or she is not really keen on speaking to you and could have blocked your number from his or her own end?

Well, it does happen. You are frantic to put a call through to someone for whatever reasons, but the person already blocked your number and you can seem to reach him or her.

Though, it’s quite helpful too to block a person’s number when the person seems to be disturbing you with incessant calls when sales agents keep bogging you about one promotion or the other and just when you do not wish to be on talking terms with a person for some time or anymore.

4 ways to know when someone blocks your number

But when you are at the receiving end, so how do you know when your number has been blocked by the other party? Here is what to do:

1. Try calling the number to verify

Now you can carry out a little experiment just like we did and see the outcome for yourself. To know if a person actually blocked your number, you might need to call the person’s number to see how many times it would ring before it goes to voicemail. So, you call the person and it only rings once, then you get a call divert to voicemail service with an invitation to leave a message.

Once the above action happens, that’s just one of the signs you need to indicate that the recipient most likely blocked your number.

However, from experimenting with an iPhone, we switched off the iPhone, then tried calling the number and it rang just once and went to a voicemail message. So, the challenge with this option is that there is a likelihood the recipient of the call had his phone switched off or on auto-divert.

If the recipient actually blocks your number and you send a voicemail the recipient still receives the message under blocked messages, deleted messages folder. That way the recipient can read through and still decide whether or not they want to respond to you.

How to confirm if your number is blocked?

To be sure the recipient blocked the number and not that it’s on call-divert or switched off, do this:

• Use another person’s number to call the recipient to see if it rings once and goes to voicemail or rings multiple times.
• Go to your phone settings to locate the caller ID and switch off. Once you switch off caller ID you would have immediately escaped detection.
• You can choose to include your country code in your number, especially with landline and then dial the recipient to see if it rings through.

Now, in any of these situations if the recipient’s phone is on and then it rings multiple times that means the recipient blocked your number. But if it rings once, you get a busy tone or the call cuts off or you receive the same voicemail request, then the chances are that the phone has been switched off or on auto divert and not your number blocked by the recipient.

If the recipient blocks your call then it is either he or she picks the unknown number, allows it to ring multiple times without response because it is an unknown number or no familiar caller ID.

2. Send the contact a text message

One other way to confirm if your number has been blocked by a contact is to send an SMS to the recipient and check delivery status. Though on Android devices, it is not easy to tell if your message has been read by the recipient.

That’s especially with third-party apps like Sideline, Burner or Hushed you can confirm the status of your SMS and verify if the recipient has read the message. That’s how to find if someone blocked your number from texting.

Now, how to tell if someone blocked your number on iPhone?

For iPhone, the iMessage feature makes it easier to confirm if a message has been seen by the recipient. iMessage on iPhone can show that the message has been delivered but not read. The recipient can read the message without your knowing if he or she did not activate the ‘show messages as read’ on the iPhone. But with the Read Receipt feature, once a message shows ‘Read’ it is one way to indicate that your number was not blocked by the recipient, probably he or she has a very tight schedule.

3. Send Whatsapp Message

If your contact is on Whatsapp, it can provide a means to confirm if your number has been blocked by the contact. Send the recipient a Whatsapp message and then ask for a reply to the message.

Then study the checkmarks to confirm the status, the first check means a message sent and the second means message delivered. But if it has only one checkmark that’s indicative the contact has blocked your number even on Whatsapp. But where the checkmarks turn blue it means he or she has seen your messages and maybe cannot or does not want to reply.

4. Delete the contact’s number from your phone list

Using an Android phone

• Go to the contact app and click on the contact’s name.
• On Contact Homepage go to the top right corner and click More.
• Click Delete on the pop-up message.
• Then go to compose a message and where you indicate the contact type the contact name on the ‘to’ section for contact name and number.
• Check to see what appears.
• If your contact’s name comes up as a suggestion then the recipient did not block your number but if not it’s indicative your number has been blocked.

Using an iPhone

• Open contact app to locate the target.
• Go to the top right corner to click on edit.
• Scroll to the bottom to delete the contact and click delete on the pop up to confirm.
• Go to compose a message and type the contact’s name on the ‘to section’.
• Check if the name appears or not, if it does, then you are good, but if not, your number has been blocked.

Several possibilities can occur with regards to a recipient not picking your calls or replying to your text messages. One of these possibilities is that once the caller activates ‘Do not disturb Mode’ on their device, it stops all calls and text messages from going through. So this might not be targeted at any particular person.

You can, however, in this case, try much later to see if it would go through, but the same process with a single ring and voicemail or deleted messages will occur if the ‘DND’ mode is still active.