Digital communication is an incredibly important part of life in the modern world. People are able to send and receive messages no matter where they are using social media, cell phones, and computers. It’s an integral part of life for almost all people in the modern world, and is a huge part of what makes life so much easier and interconnected today. 

However, due to the nature of technology, there are bound to be technological glitches, or things that get in the way of messages going through. Whether it’s up to a technological failure or a relational mishap, occasionally messages get blocked, and don’t go through. It’s not a common situation, which often makes it more confusing whenever it happens. Here is what to do when you get a message from a communications provider alerting you that there is a block happening somewhere in the line of communication. 

‍

What It Means

Fundamentally, message blocking serves to make sure that a message doesn’t go through. It is something that can be done purposefully, but also is occasionally turned on automatically in a few select circumstances. 

When a user is blocking messages intentionally, it’s usually done to make it so that the recipient doesn’t receive text messages from specific senders. It is typically done to block off communication from one avenue for a variety of reasons. Blocking is commonly used on scammers and spammers who send high volumes of messages to people without their consent. Blocking makes it so that these messages don’t go through, and can’t even reach the person’s phone. 

Another common reason that blocking error messages appear is due to there being errors in the technology that links two communication devices together. Typically, this error message will appear when the sender believes that the message is being blocked, even when the recipient isn’t actually blocking the message. Often, when a message is attempted to be sent multiple times and doesn't go through to the other phone, it will register as a “blocked” message. 

Message blocking also appears outside of the medium of texting. In fact, email blocking has actually been around for longer than text blocking, and is sometimes used even more commonly. The most common way that this is seen in the modern world is through people making use of their email client’s blocking feature, similarly to texting. It’s easy to do when blocking the messages of people you don’t want to hear from, and can make it much easier to lower the amount of messages you receive in your inbox. 

Another common way that messages indicating that your message has been blocked appear is by identifying that your email didn’t go through for one reason or another. Sometimes, it’s because the recipient’s email service rejected the email automatically, due to a glitch or other error in its system. This isn’t very common, but it does happen often enough to be noted. 

Another reason that it may happen is because the email client aborted the email sending, because it wasn’t confident that it would arrive properly. Occasionally, there are a variety of different problems that make it so that emails are unlikely to be properly sent, which will cause the email service to stop trying to send that email. This happens in a lot of cases that involve broken internet connections and excessively large file sizes in the email. Occasionally, it will just happen as a result of a simple technological bug or glitch. 

‍

What It’s Blocking

When you receive a message saying that a message has been blocked, it indicates that the message didn’t go through to the recipient. This can mean a lot of different things. If you sent an email or a text message to someone, this message indicates that the content of the message wasn’t able to complete it’s sending process to the person. This includes the words themselves, but can also include any multimedia files that were sent as well, like photos, videos, or audio files. 

Sometimes, people will turn on blocking in an attempt to not get any overages on the messages that they receive on their phone plan. While it’s generally not the best way to avoid overages, it will still block SMS and MMS messages from being delivered to your phone or mobile device. It also blocks instant messages that are sent over SMS, which can include messages from apps that forward messages from third party apps to your phone over SMS. 

It is also important to note that there are some kinds of messages that actually typically don’t get blocked by messaging services. While the actual types of messages can vary from service to service, some of the most popular types include: 

• Voicemail notifications
• Service notifications
• Emergency alerts
• Free messages from providers sent to notify you of content you purchased. 
• Standard-rated short code messages
  

These messages will typically not be counted against your SMS or MMS texting limits, and are unlikely to be messages that you would want to block anyways. If you want to find the specific messages that will not be blocked, reach out to your cell phone provider to find out. 

When you’re texting someone and get that message, it is because their carrier is blocking their messages (whether purposefully or not) and your messages don’t qualify as those specific ones that will pass through the block. 

‍

How You Get This Message

This message will typically appear after you have sent a text message to a person, and it didn't go through. It is an automated message that will typically include the content of the message, who it was addressed to, and occasionally an error code that will help to diagnose the problem. If you do get an error code inside of the automated message, try searching for what that specific error code means on the internet. These are typically specific to the recipient’s carrier, and can help to specify exactly what went wrong, so it can be dealt with in a way that is effective and efficient. 

‍

Fixing The Problem

When there is a block in between the sender and the recipient of a text or email message, the best thing to focus on is creating communication between the two parties. Often, there are more than one usable line of communication between two people, and so it’s important to try those other methods. For example, if the message was blocked over text, trying sending an email or a call to the person in question. Clarifying that your message was blocked can help make both sides aware of the problem at hand, and can make it easier to solve the problem. 

If the block is a result of a technical problem, odds are good that if you wait for a little while and then send the message again, it will work fine. Unintentional blocking is often the result of processes glitching, or the recipient not being within the range of their service providers. Both of these are situations that will likely change fairly quickly, so it isn’t much to worry about. 

If the message block is intentional, then it may be a good idea to assess the problem in a way that is appropriate for the given situation. Often, miscommunications happen and can cause issues, so it’s a good idea to make sure that communication is clear and issues can be dealt with in a timely and effective manner. 

‍

Why Community Features Won't Be Blocked

Community strives to only use the highest quality messaging services to get your messages to your Community. While some messages may not go through due to errors on the side of the recipient, the sending point is virtually guaranteed to work effectively. 

Another feature of Community that makes it less likely to be blocked is that it is not a service that promotes spam messages. Using features like Clustering and Insights, it is incredibly easy to send the exact right messages to the right people, every time. This makes it so that people don’t have to receive messages they don’t want to, and every message can be as applicable to them as individually as possible. The legitimate ways to scale engagement with Community make both the leader and their community happier, and more dedicated to each other. 

‍

Conclusion

Blocked messages are never fun to deal with. But due to the way that modern communication and technology work, they can be dealt with and worked through as long as you know the proper things to do in those situations. Always remember to keep a level head, assume the best about the recipient, and make use of any information that automated messages give to you. 

If you are looking for a service that will make it much more unlikely for your mass text messages to be blocked, check out Community. It’s a relationship-based text messaging service that is legitimately focused around quality communication, not just quantity of messages sent. If you want to truly build into and expand the community around your business or even yourself, Community is the best way to foster genuine interaction and engagement. Check out Community today for a more connected and engaged tomorrow! 

‍

Sources: 

Error message from sender 9230 | Sprint

Prevent mail to Gmail users from being blocked or sent to spam - Gmail Help | Google

Message Blocking | T-Mobile