How to Block People and Applications on Facebook

By Carolyn Abram from Facebook For Dummies, 4th Edition

If someone does something on Facebook that bothers you, you may choose to block them. To get to your block lists, click Manage Blocking to the right of the Blocked People and Apps section on the Privacy page. This takes you to the Manage Blocking privacy page.

Blocking someone on Facebook is the strongest way to distance yourself from someone else on Facebook. For the most part, if you add someone to your Block list, he can't see any traces of you on Facebook. You won’t show up in his News Feed; if he looks at a photo in which you’re tagged, he may see you in the photo (that’s unavoidable), but he won’t see that your name has been tagged. When you write on other people’s timelines, your posts are hidden from him. A few key things to remember about blocking:

It’s almost entirely reciprocal. If you block someone, he is just as invisible to you as you are to him. So you can’t access his timeline, nor can you see anything about him anywhere on the site. The only difference is that if you blocked the relationship, you’re the only one who can unblock it.
People who you block are not notified that you blocked them. Nor are they notified if you unblock them. If they are savvy Facebook users, they may notice your suspicious absence, but Facebook never tells them that they have been blocked by you.
From someone’s timeline, click the gear button at the top of their About section to open a drop-down menu with the Report/Block option. When you block someone who is a friend, you are prompted to unfriend them in addition to reporting or blocking them. If you block from the privacy page, you can enter the name or e-mail address of anyone, and you automatically unfriend (if you were friends) and block that person.

Blocking on Facebook doesn’t necessarily extend to Apps and Games you use on Facebook and around the Internet. Contact the Developers of the apps you use to learn how to block people within games and apps.

To add people to your Block list, simply enter their name or e-mail address into the boxes provided. Then click the Block button. Their name then appears in a list here. Click the Unblock link next to their names if you wish to remove the block.

There are other blocking options to consider:

Block App Invites: As you get going on the site, you may find out you know people who love to send a ton of application invites. You might even become that person. But say that you aren't a big fan of using applications. Rather than block the overly friendly person who’s sending you all those invitations, you can simply block invitations. This option still allows you to interact with your friend in every other way, but you won’t receive application invites.
Block Event Invites: Similar to App Invites, you may have friends who are big planners and love to invite all of their friends to their events. These may be events that you have no chance of attending because they are taking place across the country, and your friend has chosen to invite all of his friends without any regard for location. Again, your friend is cool; his endless unnecessary invitations are not. Instead of getting rid of your friend, you can get rid of the invitations by entering his name here.
Blocked Apps: The Blocked Apps section lists the apps you have blocked from that app’s Page. Blocked apps cannot contact you or use your information in the app. Apps can be unblocked by clicking the Unblock link next to the app’s name.