Managing people you've blocked on LinkedIn

Update for October, 2017:

In the original version of this article, I wrote that you can look for the recent activity of a person you suspect may have closed their account (or had it closed by LinkedIn) and the presence of posting, commenting and liking activity would indicate that the account is still active; the absence of activity would indicate the account is closed.

This is no longer true. The absence of activity can also mean that the person has blocked you (or you blocked them). The "trick" I explained to finding whether it's safe to remove a person from your blocked list is now obsolete. I'll keep this article just to hold the record of those people who liked it or commented on it.

Sometimes you just have to block someone

LinkedIn allows you to block other LinkedIn members. The action is usually reserved for cases where you want to "become invisible" to some Person X in response to harassment or other unwanted attention you've received. It's a step beyond merely disconnecting from someone (if you are connected at all) or ceasing to follow them.

Details are at this help page ==> https://www.dhirubhai.net/help/linkedin/answer/2839

which reads, in part:

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. You won't be able to see each other’s shared content...

Blocking has its limits

There's a cap on how many people you can block; it had been 50 for a time and was later raised to 250. Lately, I have heard of several people finding that even 250 is too low a limit--their Blocked lists have filled up.

I do not believe that LinkedIn ever prunes anyone's Blocked list of members who leave the site (with their memberships canceled or accounts closed), but I may run an experiment from time to time and try to find that out.

What a Blocked list looks like

You'll find the list of those you've blocked on the path ...

(Me) > Settings & Privacy > Privacy > Blocking and hiding > Blocking.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION

To deal with the case of a blocked list that is nearly full, I am researching what techniques you might use to identify a member of your blocked list who is no longer active on the site, such that you could remove the person and make room to block others. If and when I have something to report, I'll update this article.

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I enjoy delving into LinkedIn technical issues. To see other articles I've written, please surf to ==> https://www.dhirubhai.net/today/author/sidclark

With the new user interface rolled out on the browser lately, some of the older articles are out-of-date, but I hope you gain something from most of them. Thanks for reading.