How to tell if someone has blocked your number on their iOS 7 iPhone

How to tell if someone

 has blocked your number

 on their iOS 7 iPhone

What happens when you ring someone who's blocked you?

  We rang the iPhone that had blocked us. The phone rang exactly once, and then we were told that the number was unavailable. Then we were invited to leave a message. (Note that the iPhone never received any notification that this message had been left. But the blocker can access these messages if they choose to go into their voicemail and scroll down to the 'Blocked Messages' folder. Thanks to reader 'Kat' for bringing this to our attention.)

  A single ring and then being diverted to voicemail is the giveaway behaviour you're looking for - but this can also result from the phone being switched off or set to auto divert. 

  To rule these out, you can immediately ring again from a different number, or disguise your number using the relevant code for your country (141 from a UK landline, for instance), or by switching off your call ID in the settings if you're using an iPhone (Settings, Phone, Show My Caller ID, switch to off).

  This time your number won't be visible and any block on that number will be bypassed. If the phone really is switched off or set to divert, it will once again ring once and then go to voicemail. But if you were blocked, either the person will pick up, or it will ring a few times until you ring off or they turn down the call because there isn't a caller ID they recognise.

  Thanks to our reader, posting below under the name 'This is true', for coming up with this cunning scheme.

And what happens if you text someone who's blocked you?

What about if you send a text to the 'blocker'?

We tried to send a text message to the phone that had blocked us. Everything proceeded as usual - the text sent, and we got no error message. But the 'receiver' didn't get any message, or any notification.

But a clever reader, Vickie Humphrey, has thought up a way to get more clues - try to send the text as an iMessage.

"The way to tell if you've been blocked," Vickie explains, "is by checking to see if your iMessage says 'Delivered'. You've been blocked if it doesn't, and after a good few minutes, it sends as a text message. Which is never actually being received."

How to tell if someone has blocked your phone number on iOS 7

So. Other than the obvious clues - you never seem to be able to get through to someone, despite ringing at various times and checking that you've got the right number - the main giveaway is the way you get diverted to voicemail after exactly one ring. If your call is manually declined, or if they're just not available, then you'd expect the phone to ring several times before you're diverted.

If you're getting a single ring before being diverted to voicemail, and then when you try again with caller ID hidden you get a different response (multiple rings and then declined or diverted, or they pick up) then something is probably up.

Finally, Vickie's clever iMessage trick is a useful way of seeing if you've been blocked, assuming you're calling from an iPhone.

Remember that just because you are allowed to leave a message - or because your text seemed to go through without any problems - that doesn't put you in the clear. The blocking process is quite sneaky about letting you (the caller) know what's happened.

As we said, though, there's no way to be sure this is what's happened, so be careful before you start throwing around accusations! And if any amateur sleuths out there work out a foolproof method of finding out if you've been blocked, let us know in the comments or via Twitter. Our thanks to the clever readers who've already contributed techniques for cracking the mystery.

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