Blocking someone on Instagram enables you to avoid undesired attention from Instagram users. But how to tell when someone blocks you? Let's uncover several tips on how to know that you've been blocked by someone on the platform.

How Do You Know If Someone Blocked You on Instagram?

Instagram doesn’t send you notifications when someone blocks your account or restricts your actions – these are two main sanctions Instagram applies to you when another user wants to avoid your attention.

💡Suggested read: Instagram action block – how to get rid of it.

Instagram Account Block

This is the most severe way to restrict your communication with another user. But how can you tell if you have been blocked on Instagram?

Here are several signs that'll let you know you've been blocked by another user on Instagram.

  • You were removed from followings or followers of this Instagram user.
  • You can’t find this user when searching for them on Instagram but can find them searching from another account. This is the easiest way to know if someone did block you.
When you want to block someone, Insagram informs you about the restrictions this user will face.

However, if the profile doesn’t appear in search at all, it doesn't always mean you've been blocked. Another case when you can't find someone might mean they've deactivated their account.

💡Note that all comments and likes you left on the user’s account will be deleted when you're blocked. If a person unblocks you, your likes, comments and status as their follower will not return. All DMs you sent when you were blocked wouldn’t be delivered to them either.

Instagram Restriction

Instagram restriction doesn't block your entire account. Rather, it limits some of the interactions you could previously make with this account. There are no obvious signs that you've been actually restricted, so you'd better try interact with this user from another Instagram account and compare.

Generally, these ones might signal that your actions were restricted:

  1. Your comments don’t appear under the user’s post or appear not right after you leave them.

If your actions are restricted by the user, they need to approve your comments first. Only then they will be visible to the public or, in case they don’t approve, visible only to yourself.

2. You can’t see the user’s status (online or offline) in DM nor can’t you see that            your message has been read.

💡But here’s the thing: a user can hide this in private settings (Settings - Privacy -> Activity Status -> Show Activity Status -> Off), so this one doesn’t always mean you were restricted. To find out for sure, you need to use another Instagram account and check it from there.

How to Know If Someone Blocked You on Instagram

To verify your suspicion and make sure they've blocked you, try these actions:

If you're blocked, you won't find anyone by this handle.

Send them a DM

Try sending a message to this user if you've previously had a conversation with them in DM. If you're blocked, this message will be sent but never delivered to or read by this user.

Go to the user’s account through Instagram Direct

When you visit their profile right from DM, you'll see an empty page with no posts or any activity if you're blocked.

When you click on someone in your DMs to visit their profile and see this, you've been blocked

If someone blocked you on Instagram, you won’t be able to see their posts,  followers, followings or follow them: User not found instead of the Follow/Unfollow button will show up.

💡Don't confuse it with private Instagram accounts: when an account is private, you can find it on Instgram and follow it but can't see what's posted there.

Open Instagram web and search for this user again

If you're blocked, you won't find them via Instagram web either.

Search for this user from another Instagram account

If you're able to find them from a different account, your primary account has been blocked by this person.

Find them in Combin Growth & check if you can find them on Instagram

If you can, it means the user has blocked your account.

Here's how you can do that in Combin Growth:

  1. In order to initiate a search, install and launch Combin Growth, then open the Search tab.
  2. Select search by Users.

Searching by Users allows you to search Instagram users by followers of a certain account, followings, commenters, likers, bio and user handles. To do so, you just need to know the username of an account whose followers, followings, or likers you want to find.

3. Move to the Search by section to specify the type of audience you want to target. Click the field to open the drop-down list of options. Select Users List.

4. Insert a username of this account into the Users field.

Below the default search settings, there are Fast search and Advanced Filters and Analysis features.

  • Enable the Fast search mode to load search results quicker but without information about accounts (e.g. following and followers count, gender, etc.)
  • Enable the Advanced Filters, and Analysis feature to activate machine learning user analysis and set the preferable language, gender, last activity, following/followers range filters.

4. Press Find.

In a couple of minutes, Combin Growth will find this user. Thus, you can make sure they've blocked you. You can then click on their profile and see the last content they've posted.

Try Combin Growth for free 👇