Daily Times

Getting rid of rubbish friends, lovers and relatives has never been easier.

If you want to cut someone out of your life, just block their calls or texts on your iPhone and they might as well have disappeared into an alternative dimension.

But if you’re the one who’s been clobbered with the stone wall tactics? What if your husband, best mate or mother has decided to silence you?

We’ve got your back. Here are a few ways of finding out if someone’s blocked you from their iPhone – and a sneaky tactic for getting one more chance at contacting them!

1) Please leave a message after your moan – if you keep phoning someone and you get one ring before being dumped onto their answer phone, that person’s probably blocked you!

Yes, there’s a chance they could have switched their phone to do not disturb, but if you keep getting asked to leave a message, something’s gone wrong in your relationship. Don’t think you can scream abuse after the bleep either, because people can’t hear messages left by anyone they have blocked.

You’ll have to resort to old-school tactics to get in touch, like going and crying outside their door.

2) Textual aggression – sadly, if you send someone a text and you’re blocked, you’ll never actually know about it! Your messages might turn green or blue when you’re trying to correspond with someone who hates you, but don’t be fooled. Apple has cleverly designed its iPhone operating system so it makes blocked people think their texts have arrived, whilst the receiver never actually gets them. There’s no real way to get around this, so you’ll just have to assume that if someone doesn’t reply to your missives, they just aren’t that into talking to you.

3) The solution – you’ve phoned and texted every few minutes for the past three and a half months and you’ve still not got a reply!

To test if you’re blocked you could just try phoning from another line, which will expose your friend’s or lover’s nasty intentions.

You could also go into your own iPhone’s settings, click on the Phone button and then press “show my caller ID”, which will allow you to block your own number and thus dodge the screening facility. This means you’ll get through to that meanie at least once before they call the cops and get you blocked off from the whole of free society.