FutureFive New Zealand - Consumer technology news & reviews from the future
Story image
How to block a number on iPhone…
Tue, 25th Feb 2014
FYI, this story is more than a year old

I’ve only ever had to block a number once in my life. It was when my friend’s uncle split up from his wife and thought it would be a good idea for us to go out on a date. I was 21. He was fifty something. Gross.

Whatever your reasons are for wanting to block a number, you should be able to and it should be easy for you to do so.

I remember back then, I had to call Vodafone, be on hold for 37 minutes, and ask them to do it. It wasn’t even guaranteed that they would; I had to have a valid reason. What.

The recent upgrade of iOS7 has made it especially easy to block numbers on your iPhone. This feature allows you to block a number pretty easily and that person won’t ever be able to call or text you again. Until they get a new number, that is.

So, the easiest way to do it to use the contact card. Open the contact info of the person you are wishing to block, scroll to the bottom of the card and tap Block this Caller. They will no longer be able to blow up your phone. Hooray.

This doesn’t mean that you have to add a person as a contact in order to block them. In your text message history, just tap on the little ‘I” icon and you can access their contact info that way. You can do the same in your call history.

You can also find a list of the shunned under phone options in Settings. Haha.

If you haven’t upgraded, you will still have to call your phone provider and ask them to block the contact.

If you have a jailbreak phone, you will have to download an app that allows you to block contacts, such as iBlacklist.

Once you’ve blocked someone, there is no way to read any text messages they have may sent you while they were blocked.

So now are you paranoid that you may have been blocked? If you’re receiving an engaged/busy signal when you call someone, you’ve probably been cut. Sorry.

Ever had to block a mobile number? Tell us your experiences in the comments below