Can You Block Someone on LinkedIn?

LinkedIn can be a great resource from a professional and a business perspective, letting you connect with others in a specific industry, look for a new job or find a great new employee. Occasionally, however, people who aren’t interested in maintaining a professional relationship may try targeting you for scams and spam. Fortunately, you can block someone on LinkedIn quite easily. Here’s how.

Why block someone on LinkedIn?

Sales and marketing people frequently try to friend you on LinkedIn, even if your role has nothing to do with what they are selling. People from your past or present, too, can also look you up and retrieve details about your career or location using your profile, which might not be information you want everyone in the world to access.

It’s always a good idea to follow smart safety tips when using social media. While you can certainly use LinkedIn’s privacy options to keep your profile from being blasted all over the internet, it is still visible to anyone who is a LinkedIn member. However, if there is someone on the site who you simply do not want to be in contact with for any reason, blocking them is a smart way to try and limit their access to you and your information.

What happens when you block someone on LinkedIn

LinkedIn does not normally notify people when they are blocked. There are a few exceptions, in general, they will be left to simply wonder where you went. Your profile will typically just appear as a page error to them.

When someone is blocked on LinkedIn, they won’t be able to:

• See your profile, shared content or information about your LinkedIn events.
• Message you, receive any of your newsletters or retain any recommendations or endorsements you might have given them.
• See you as a connection.

They can still see old messages between the two of you, but your name will no longer appear. Instead, your name shows up as simply ‘LinkedIn Member.’

What are the negative impacts of blocking someone on LinkedIn?

A couple of things could happen that might impact you negatively when you block someone. You lose recommendations and endorsements the blocked person wrote for you, for instance, and you might not be able to attend audio events where the blocked person is hosting or speaking. In this way, the blocked person might also figure out they’ve been blocked.

What’s not blocked when you block someone on LinkedIn?

When blocking someone, consider your account settings. Anyone will still be able to see public posts you might make. They still can’t see your profile, but if you don’t want them to see anything at all, don’t make public posts, share items publicly or make comments on Top Voices posts. You can change privacy and other settings by clicking your profile picture and selecting Settings and Privacy from the menu.

Tip: You can’t block private mode viewers of your profile. Anyone can still use LinkedIn in that mode and see your profile.

How do you block someone in a group you belong to?

If you need to block someone who belongs to a group you’re in, you can—it just requires a little manual labor. While you can’t block admins of the group, you still can block a group manager or someone else in the group. To do that, you first need to leave the group to block the person and then rejoin.

Related: How to know if someone blocked you on Facebook

How to block someone on LinkedIn

You can block up to 1,400 people on LinkedIn. When you’re ready to remove someone from your online business world, follow these steps to block them:

1. Go to the person’s profile.
2. Click the More button.

3. Click Report/Block.

4. Click Block (member’s name).

5. LinkedIn will ask you to confirm the block. Click Block.

The blocked person will no longer have interactions with you.

How to unblock someone on LinkedIn

If you blocked someone but would like to interact with them again, you can unblock them as easily as you blocked them. Follow these steps:

1. Go to your LinkedIn homepage and click the Me icon.
2. Click Settings & Privacy.

3. Under Settings, click Visibility.

4. Under Visibility of your profile & network, click Blocking.

5. The list of people you have blocked will appear. Find the person you want to unblock and click Unblock.

6. Enter your password to unblock the person.
7. Click Unblock Member.

Note: Once you unblock someone, you must wait 48 hours before you can block them again.

Frequently Asked Questions