What happens if you block someone on Twitter? What happens if they block you?

by @JoBrodie, brodiesnotes.blogspot.com

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tl;dr
Blocking someone does not and cannot stop them from seeing your tweets. Ever.
They can always log out to view if your account is public.

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Updated 15 June 2016
Twitter's released another update that makes it much harder to see tweets of people that have blocked you and for people you've blocked to see your tweets. For the first time it seems that third party apps are also partly affected, but not to the same extent and your tweets will likely still show up in search.

I've not updated the post below but please be aware that it may now be slightly out of date. Here's a brief guide to what the changes are, with examples and comparison of what can be seen when using desktop Twitter, Twitter for iPhone and Echofon for iPhone.

Twitter's new update - blocked people can still see your tweets, but it is harder http://brodiesnotes.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/twitters-new-update-blocked-people-can.html 

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Table of Contents

1. The short version
1. What happens if you block someone on Twitter?
2. What happens if they block you?
2. The longer version
1. Historical problems with blocking
2. How to stop someone from contacting you
3. How to stop someone from reading your tweets
4. How do you know if someone has blocked you?
5. How to read the tweets of someone who's blocked you
3. Private accounts - what to watch out for
4. FAQs
5. Further reading
6. Previous updates to this post / change log

This post relates to the Twitter.com (web-based) interface. I don't have enough information about the range of smartphone apps to be able to offer much advice about these, other than Echofon for iPhone. 


1. The short version

• Blocking someone does not stop them from seeing your tweets. Period.
• Blocking someone does stop their tweets from appearing in your timeline / mentions (though you can still go looking for those tweets).
• If you want to make sure that someone cannot see your tweets then you need to make your account private, be cautious about who you allow to follow you (are you sure they've not just created another account to follow you with) and hope that their accounts aren't compromised by someone who'd cracked or phished their password.

Note that a private / locked account can never be perfectly secure. (see Section 3 below)

1.1 What happens if you block someone on Twitter?
Not much. Their tweets won't arrive in your timeline or mentions tab - you won't hear from them. They can't follow you but they can visit your profile (as of 12 December 2014 they can't view your profile on Twitter dot com [desktop] or Twitter for iPhone but they can on Echofon for iPhone) and search and still see everything you tweet though (true at 7 March 2016 on any third-party platform such as Echofon, but not official apps following a recent change however you can always log out if you're blocked but see range of methods above). If you are following a hashtag that they are tweeting on then their tweets will show up when you search for that hashtag (unless you search #hashtag -TheirTwitterName) (except on official apps / platforms as of 4-7 March 2016 as it was gradually rolled out).

1.2 What happens if they block you?
Not much. Your tweets won't show up in their timeline or mentions, they won't hear from you unless they go looking (they can click 'view tweets' on desktop Twitter or log out to view your tweets etc). You can still see their profile but you can't follow them.

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2. The longer version

Here's some nice music to listen to as you read on - I heard of it via Radiolab's Colors episode. This works on an iPhone and even plays in-page :)




Update: 8 March 2016 - as of 4 March 2016 (and it seems to be rolling out, began affecting me on 7 March) official Twitter platforms will no longer show the tweets in search results of someone who has blocked you. This does not currently affect third party apps.

The purpose of blocking, as Twitter sees it, is to prevent someone from contacting you via Twitter.

Any tweets that a blocked person sends to @YourTwitterName won't show up in your mentions or interactions. However if you search for all mentions sent to you (by literally typing @YourTwitterName into the search function) you can see any tweets they've sent you.

https://twitter.com/search?q=%40JoBrodie%20&src=typd&f=realtime = these are all public tweets sent to me (excluding those from private accounts, you won't be able to see those unless you're logged in as me). Replace the bit in bold with your user name to see tweets sent to you.

Anyone can see your tweets, unless your account is locked and all your followers are trustworthy and haven't had their passwords pinched.

2.1 Historical problems with blocking
Twitter previously set things up with blocking so that if you tried to view the account of someone who'd blocked you you couldn't. Instead you'd be shown a page saying "this user hasn't tweeted yet" or similar. (As of 12 December 2014 Twitter has returned this 'functionality').

This is no longer the case. People quickly worked out that all you had to do was search for tweets from (or to) them or use a different browser (or account) to view their profile, so it was clear that blocking didn't mean very much.

Given the somewhat "fatal" flaw (that Twitter can't tell you're you if you're logged out) I think Twitter made the right decision to make it clear, as they've since done, that everyone can still see everyone else's account. I don't know when this happened but I noticed it in October 2012 when an alternative therapist blocked me (and provided a useful test-case for me finding out about blocks). Initially I couldn't see their tweets (without logging out), then suddenly I could.

Twitter has made it much less obvious if someone has blocked you (this is deliberate).

2.2 How to stop someone from contacting you
Block them. But note that it only stops that account from contacting you via Twitter, it doesn't stop that account (or a new one they've just created) from reading your tweets.

You can use the following links to restrict your view of mentions / interactions so you only see the tweets of people that you're following.
• Mentions: https://twitter.com/mentions?filter=following
• Interactions: https://twitter.com/i/connect?filter=following (this one includes 'X favorited your tweet')

You can see all the accounts that you have blocked at https://twitter.com/settings/blocked  

Possibly a better way of preventing contact is to mute them instead of block. If you're not following them then you won't see their tweets (or their RTs or favouriting of your tweets) and they won't know that you've blocked them. It's a bit like stealth blocking.

2.3 How to stop someone from reading your tweets
Lock your account. This will stop everyone from reading your tweets, unless they're already following you. Although many people don't want to make their account public there is no way to stop only one or two people from reading your tweets. See (3) on Private accounts for more on the potential weaknesses of locked accounts.

2.4 How do you know if someone has blocked you? [Updated 12 December 2014]
View their profile on Twitter dot com or Twitter for iPhone (I assume it's the same for Twitter for Android and things like that). Twitter will now show you no tweets from them and there's a message saying that you're blocked. If you use Echofon on iPhone or iPad at time of writing (12 Dec) you'll still be able to see their profile anyway so you need to use the Twitter service to find this out.

You can still see their tweets appearing in searches when you're logged in but you won't be able to favourite or retweet them.

It may depend on whether or not you'd previously followed them. I've tried this out myself with a test account and posted what I saw here (Blocking someone on Twitter - what can they see? (14 January 2014)) but it may not be the same for everyone.

If they've blocked you then you'll see a 'Follow' button on their profile. If you try and follow them a popup will appear telling you that you can't, because the person has requested that you can't. However if they haven't blocked you they will now get a notification that you're following them - so I don't know of any way to find out if they've blocked you that doesn't risk alerting them if they actually haven't!

Similarly if you try and favourite or RT one of their tweets you'll get a message saying your account can't do that (with favouriting you don't get a message as such, just that it's impossible to make the favourite 'stick'). They aren't notified of this if they have blocked you, but of course if they haven't and you've just faved or RTed their tweet, then they'll know.

2.5 How to read the tweets of someone who's blocked you
Just go to their profile - http://twitter.com/TheirTwitterName or log out.

If their tweets are public then you can view those tweets by using any of the following methods
(a) search for their tweets either by their name or a hashtag that they're using (use desktop Twitter dot com or Hootsuite or Tweetdeck)
(b) using a different browser
(c) logging out of the blocked account and using the same browser while logged out
(d) logging into a different account
(e) using a different smartphone app - at the moment Echofon for iPhone lets me see the profiles of a couple of homeopathy quacks who've blocked me

3. Private accounts - what to watch out for
A locked account means that only people you've granted access to can follow you. New followers must request permission to follow which you can grant, or not. Since people don't have to use their real names to create an account you cannot be certain if they're someone you want to have following you or not.

For the slightly more worried...
If you know the email address of someone you may be able to find out what their Twitter name is - you can use the 'find friends' feature of Twitter in the settings to let Twitter access the email addresses in your contacts list.

You can also stop people from finding out, from your email address, what your Twitter name is by making sure that the "Discoverability Let others find me by my email address" option is unticked (I think unticked is the default setting) in the Security and Privacy section of your settings.

Remember that the security of a locked account is only as strong as the security of your followers - if one of them has their account compromised then anyone viewing their account can see your tweets.

Also, even people who are legitimately following you can still take a screenshot of your tweets and share that, or manually retweet your tweets by copying and pasting the text.

More about locked Twitter accounts:

• How to view private tweets - and what to be aware of to protect your account (7 December 2013) - as far as I know it is not possible to view the tweets of a private account but this shouldn't lull anyone into a false sense of security
• Don't assume that your private Twitter account is all that private (7 December 2012) - every tweet sent in reply to a private tweet can give some information about what was in the private tweet, a bit like hearing only one side of a phone conversation lets you guess what the other person said.

4. FAQs aka FSQ (frequently searched-for questions)
At the risk of lengthening this blog post to the point of ridiculousness I thought I'd try and answer directly some of the questions that people type into Google that bring them here. I've no idea who it is that's searching (I just get a list of search terms in Google Analytics) and I've turned the keywords into more readable questions. You can also ask questions in the comments below and I'll do my best to answer them (note that some of my replies are now out of date because Twitter keeps changing things!)

If you block someone on twitter can they see your tweets?
Yes, they can do this by viewing your profile, searching for tweets sent to or from you, finding tweets in a hashtag stream or logging out. (edit 12 Dec, they can still view your profile on Echofon)

Can non-followers read your tweets?
Yes, unless your profile is private anyone can view any of your tweets (other than DMs which only go between two people). You can pre-emptively block someone who isn't following you, but they can still read your tweets.

If you block someone on twitter can they mention you in their tweets?
Yes, although it won't show up in your mentions / interactions tab - you'll have to search for your mentions (eg type @yourname into Twitter's search), search for their tweets, or visit their profile page. But they can still talk about you and converse with others mentioned in your tweets.

Can they retweet me if I've blocked them?
Yes, but only by copying and pasting the text and retweeting manually. You won't know that they've done this unless you look at their profile or search for their tweets.

How do you know if someone has blocked you on Twitter?
See section 2.4 above please.

At time of writing (4 January 2014) I don't know of a foolproof way, without alerting them at least.

Probably you won't be able to use the Retweet button on their tweets, but if you try and retweet it (and can) they'll also get a notification that it's been retweeted. Similarly you won't be able to follow them (and Twitter might tell you that 'you have been blocked from following this account at the request of the user') however if they haven't blocked you, they get a notification that you've followed them.

Will someone know if you've blocked them on Twitter? 
Probably. If they can't see your profile on Twitter dot com or other official Twitter app then they'll know (and your profile page will now tell them that you've blocked them). If they're using Echofon for iPhone then they won't know as it (at time of writing, 12 Dec) still shows the profile and doesn't say anything about a block.

Other clues include not being able to favourite or automatically retweet (pressing the RT button on a tweet they come across elsewhere, not on your profile). They can still manually RT your tweets.

Can a blocked twitter user still see your direct messages?
I don't know for certain (not having been in that situation). I suspect that because blocking them effectively stops them from following you then they will certainly be unable to send any new DMs but I don't know if any previously sent DMs will simply disappear. If you have sent them any DMs the safest option is to delete them - this will also delete them from their inbox (as only one copy is available).

Can people tell you've been looking for them or their tweets on Twitter?
Not as far as I'm aware. To the best of my knowledge Twitter does not make information available to users about what people have been searching for (and remember you can also search Twitter from outside of Twitter itself using Google, by searching for site:twitter.com keyword, and Topsy.com among other tools). So in that sense probably not.

But if you come across a tweet and respond to it then you've kind of given yourself away there ;)

Can you still view tweets when not logged in?
Yes, as long as those tweets don't belong to protected accounts, you can still see everything you just can't interact with them. Twitter's homepage (http://twitter.com) is a bit unwelcoming if you're not logged in so it helps to know the address of the profile you want to look at (eg http://twitter.com/ScreenName) and the basic search address which is http://search.twitter.com

Other than going private, is there a way to stop someone from seeing your tweets?
No. Blocking doesn't even do this (if they log out they can certainly see your tweets and even if logged in they can search for them and they'll probably show up in the results too). Protecting your account is the only way to stop someone seeing them - but you have to trust that everyone whom you've allowed to follow you isn't going to retweet your tweets without permission and give the game away.

On Twitter what does 'we block eggs' mean?
When someone is new to Twitter they have the symbol of an egg as their picture (avatar) which they can then change to something else. Spam accounts are often created just to send the same link to a lot of people, they don't bother to change the picture so people associate these eggs with spammers and are wary. Not all spammers have the egg picture and not all people with egg avatars are spammers, but it is a 'risk factor' for an account to be treated more cautiously.

I'd never heard the phrase used before (people usually say "I block..." and they usually talk about blocking spam accounts, to me 'we' is an unusual word to write on a Twitter account unless it's an organisational one) but it seems that this is a phrase that has been used on a few accounts shared by married couples looking for *ahem* other people for fun and games. Well that was a bit of an eye-opener ;) This will take you to the search page for that phrase, there's nothing particularly saucy there, just info about accounts who use that phrase in their Twitter bio https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22we+block+eggs%22

Presumably people who are using Twitter to talk about these interests are more likely to be targeted for spam and so have a lower tolerance for such accounts. You learn something new every day...


5. Further reading

See Twitter's support page for Blocking users on Twitter.

From my blog:
Twitter's updated its block function but nothing has really changed (12 December 2014)
What does a blocked person see when they look at your account? (14 January 2014) - of course this is now out of date ;) (12 Dec 2014)
Don't assume your private Twitter account doesn't give your information away (7 December 2013)


6. Previous updates to this post / change log

Although this post has been around for a few years now it's regularly updated because Twitter keeps changing what the block function does. 

Updated Tuesday 8 March 2016 10am
If you see "You are blocked from following @Name and viewing @Name's Tweets. Learn more" you can (a) log out to view, (b)** search for from:theirname to see their tweets, (c) use a non-official Twitter app or platform (eg Echofon, Tweetdeck) which will show you their profile and their tweets or (d) use a second account. And of course, obviously, this is how someone that you've blocked would look at your tweets.

The only way to block someone from seeing your tweets is to make your account private (which means only people you've permitted to follow you can see them). They can still see public tweets sent to you though.

**Update: this no longer works in official Twitter apps.

Twitter appears to be gradually rolling out a new thing for search that affects only (at the moment) official Twitter platforms such as desktop browsers (ie where you log in to twitter.com) or official phone apps. I first noticed it on 7 March and on searching found that others had experienced it since 4 March.

Currently it appears that on official Twitter it is NOT possible to search for the tweets of someone who has blocked you, and these tweets will also not show up in searches for hashtags.

People who have blocked you are hidden from official Twitter search results.
Or...
People whom you have blocked cannot see your tweets by searching on official Twitter

This does not appear to affect third party apps (where profiles of someone that's blocked you are visible too) and even if it did people can always see a blocker's tweets by logging out.

Updated Friday 12 December 2014
Twitter seems to have rolled out a new format for its block function. The desktop and 'Twitter for smartphone' will now show you a page saying "You are blocked from following @Name and viewing @Name's Tweets. Learn more" - this does not mean that you can't view their tweets. Or that if you've blocked someone they can't view yours.

All anyone has to do to view tweets of someone who's blocked them (or see your tweets if you've blocked them) is any of the following (a) use another account (b) log out (c) use a different browser (d) use a different third party app, eg Echofon on iPhone shows profiles of homeopaths who've blocked me even if desktop Twitter doesn't (e) search for their tweets on Twitter desktop or with Hootsuite / Tweetdeck.

So people celebrating that Twitter's finally made the block function work are a little mistaken I think. Here's a freshly written blog post with a bit more detail Twitter's updated its block function but nothing has really changed (12 December 2014).
 
For those with an interest in the history of the the changes that Twitter brought in and then reversed again in December 2014 see Forbes' Blocking people on Twitter now just mutes them and Twitter reversed some / most / all of the changes in response to the complaints.

updated Sunday 25 May 2014, 10:48am
Twitter's rolled out a Mute function on desktop Twitter.com and has slightly tweaked the block function (nothing significant to how it works, just that a block now reports the user for one of four options), I've written a post about it here:
Twitter (desktop version) has a new Mute option for users, what does it do? (25 May 2014)

14 January 2014
See in pictures what someone you've blocked can see of your tweets "Blocking someone on Twitter - what can they see? (14 January 2014)"


re-written from scratch Saturday 4 January 2014, 17:07pm
Welcome to the updated version of this post. The original, written 18 months ago, is now out of date because Twitter made a number of changes, first gradual and then more dramatic (before reversing them again) to what happened when person A blocks person B. If you want to read the original post it's available as a Word document (5 pages!).  

If you want to see, in pictures, what someone you've blocked can see of your tweets have a look at "Blocking someone on Twitter - what can they see? (14 January 2014)"