Something appears to be in the air because I’ve been asked this question a few times this month:
How can I block someone that I’ve already removed as a connection on LinkedIn, but still keeps annoying me with invitations to connect, group invites and other such things?
Is Mercury in retrograde? Perhaps. However, I’d rather not go into some of the reasons these folks gave for wanting to take things to that extreme (I was able to get at least one person to rethink it), so I decided to just go ahead and share what LinkedIn provides as a “Member Blocking Overview” in this post.
I strongly recommend, though, that you consider simply limiting people’s access to you. Perhaps one (or more) of these options could be a better choice for your situation (btw, all links below go to content within LinkedIn’s Help Center):
- Hide the public version of your profile that’s visible to people who aren’t signed in to LinkedIn.
- Hide your profile photo.
- Change your profile display name.
- Adjust your settings for who can send you invitations.
- Turn on/off Open Profile.
- Remove a 1st-degree connection.
Member Blocking – Overview
When you block a member on LinkedIn, here’s what will happen:
- You won’t be able to access each other’s profiles on LinkedIn
- You won’t be able to message each other on LinkedIn
- If you’re connected, you won’t be connected anymore
- We’ll remove any endorsements and recommendations from that member
- You won’t see each other in your “Who’s Viewed Your Profile”
- We’ll stop suggesting you to each other in features such as “People You May Know” and “People also Viewed”
LinkedIn will not notify the person that you blocked them, and only you will be able to unblock the member.
Blocking behavior is mutual for you and the person you block. Once you block someone, you won’t be able to view their profile information, see content they have shared, see them in your Who’s Viewed Your Profile, or send communications to them while signed in on LinkedIn either.
Please note the following regarding blocking:
- Blocking doesn’t apply to information you have made public, such as your public profile, content posted in public (open) group discussions, your own public shares, and comments on Influencer posts. You can always review your public profile settings to change how you appear in public search engines.
- Mutual connections that you share with someone you’ve blocked, may re-share content created by the person you’ve blocked into your stream. You can choose to hide these updates from your stream.
- There is not a way to block anonymous viewers of your profile at this time.
- Blocking isn’t supported between a group member and a group manager.
- If you’d like to block a manager of a group you belong to, you will need to leave the group first, and then block that person.
- If you’d like to block a member of a group you manage, you will need to remove that member from the group and then block that person.
- Contact records that have been stored or saved locally to your device need to be removed manually.
- If you’re accessing LinkedIn via a mobile device, you could see cached data regarding the blocked member’s profile. To refresh your cache, login and log out of your LinkedIn mobile applications.
- If you’re using 3rd party applications that leverage LinkedIn’s APIs you could see cached data of a blocked member on those applications. If that occurs, you’ll want to contact the application for instructions on removing that cached data.
- Blocking doesn’t currently apply to mobile, SlideShare, and LinkedIn Pulse.
- Blocking doesn’t work within LinkedIn Intro, which was shut down as of March 7, 2014.
Please let me know if I can help you with this issue or if none of the above sounds like the best solution for your situation. And if you’re in need of some expert assistance with leveraging LinkedIn as a tool for business or career, be sure to contact me.
P.S. I checked; Mercury IS in retrograde. June 7 – July 2. 🙂
Image: almanac.com