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The Xbox console from Microsoft has gone through different versions of itself in the past two decades. Over time, it has developed from a relatively simple entertainment system to something that is more expansive. Various new features seem to come out for it every few months, but one of the most popular aspects of the whole thing is the social one.
Thanks to the Xbox Live Network, gamers from all over the world can connect with each other. Their gamertags, or online profiles, store information related to their in-game achievements, certain cooperative or competitive matches, and other things that may be of interest. Most of the time, players can see at least basic information about these details by accessing the cards of others. Direct messaging is also a feature one can use for communication.
As fun as the social part of online gaming can be, you may come up against other players who simply are not enjoyable to deal with directly. When this happens, you have the option to block them on your Xbox profile. Blocking is a feature that is available on most forms of social apps, and we will discuss what precisely happens when you use it to your advantage on the Xbox gaming system.
Additionally, we’ll cover what the blocked party might see as a result, whether messages themselves can be blocked, what happens when you delete them, and the details of full account deletion.
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Table of Contents
What Happens if You Block Someone on Xbox?
Before we get into what happens when you block someone, we should establish the differences between blocking and muting.
Muting another player is for specific in-game sessions during which voice chatting is active. If you would prefer not to hear that player, you can mute them on your end to prevent them from getting through to your headset or other audio device.
This is an action you may need to take in multiple gaming sessions if you would like to continue not hearing the player in question. However, they will still be in the game sessions, have access to some of your gamertag data, and be able to exchange other forms of communication with you.
You can mute them directly by selecting the appropriate option in their player profile. If they aren’t on your list already, you can search for them by gamertag.
Blocking involves making sure that another player cannot contact you directly in any way by using any of the features pertaining to Xbox Live.
It will also do the following:
- Prevent them from sending you messages
- Stop them from sending out game invites
- Stop all party invites
- Put blocks on being able to see your online activity
Does Blocking Someone on Xbox Remove You From Their Friends List?
If this person is on your list of friends, it will take them off it once you put the block on. However if they are the ones to block you, then it removes you from their friend list, but you still have them on your friends list.
Will the Person Know if I Block Them on Xbox?
Typically, another player will not know if you have placed a block on them. However, that doesn’t mean that there are no ways for them to find out about it.
These methods are not conventional, and what we’ve gathered may not comprise the entirety of the ways in which another Xbox player can find out about a block you have set. However, this information represents the usual channels through which a determined party may find out that you’ve blocked them.
If a person sends a message or invite to a blocked player, the player in question doesn’t get it, but the sender also doesn’t get a notification that it didn’t go through. Therefore, much like blocking on some messaging apps, nothing abnormal should appear to the sender. However, if a blocked gamer has at least one mutual friend in common with you, they may ask this third party whether they’ve been blocked.
The friend in question may be able to provide an answer for them. Alternatively, a player who suspects they’ve been blocked may check a friend’s party chat option. If a gaming party is active, a player who has blocked someone may show up as simply ’Unknown’ from within the party chat window. This is a sign that the individual has blocked the person doing the checking.
Can You Block Messages on Xbox?
Yes, you can stop messages from getting through to you at all on the Xbox Live service. This is like what happens with blocking, but it may mean that you need to change some settings in your profile.
It is also possible that you just want to keep random messages from coming through to you without having to block several players. This also leaves things open to connect with those players for party chats, online gaming, and other things, as well as keeping some of their information visible to you.
The first thing you may wish to try is making sure your message settings are on ‘Friends Only’. This should prevent anyone who is not on your approved list already from sending messages.
It is important to remember that, while this is a straightforward method of filtering out messages from anyone who isn’t your online friend, it may not prevent messages from actually coming through. What it may do is turn off the notifications for the messages. If you go to check your chat history, you may find new messages waiting for which you did not get any alerts.
To block messages out completely, you may need to adjust your online privacy settings for your account. Doing so creates a different set of rules that governs how communications from your profile send out or come in, and you can tweak these settings as necessary.
This is something you can do in the same section that you might set for messaging only your friends, and you should be able to find it in ’Privacy & Online Safety’. From here, you can customize various details. If you get everything to be viewable by only approved friends on your list, you should become invisible to others. Further, actively blocking other players should prevent messages from getting through at all, not just the notifications for the messages.
However, if you are getting messages from random people you don’t know and would like to stop it, be sure that you do not reply to any messages after the block occurs. Doing this will unblock them for communications automatically, and the system will assume that you want to speak to them.
What Happens if You Delete a Message on Xbox?
Deleting a message from your chat history removes it from your list of saved chats and from your display. The message will no longer show up for you. However, that message is still saved on Microsoft’s Live servers in some fashion.
It will still show up for the other party. There may be some exceptions to this, such as when Microsoft has determined that a message or chat is inappropriate.
In these cases, both parties in the chat may see that ’this message has been deleted’ instead of one party still being able to see the message. It is possible that the actual content of the message still exists in some capacity on Microsoft’s servers, however.
Will Deleting an Xbox Account Delete Messages?
In part, an Xbox account is a version of a Microsoft account. You’ll have to delete one in order to get rid of the other. You can remove your account from your console, but this does not close or delete the account.
If you do choose to close the account entirely, you will lose all Xbox Live data, your gamertag, and things associated with that account. This includes various apps or services, and it also means you don’t have access to game purchases you made in the past.
Generally, part of your data is the messages you send. These should no longer be visible, but message content may still be available to certain employees at Microsoft itself, at least for a particular period of time.
It is more likely that the messages simply won’t show up for regular Xbox users, because all data associated with the profile that sent those messages is now unavailable for viewing, and this holds true even from the original owner of said account.
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Do Xbox Messages Delete Themselves?
Typically, Xbox messages will not delete themselves. Some users may see messages that date back several years. While others report some problems with seeing more recent messages, this is likely a loading error, not actual deletion of the message content.
Said messages should show up again once loading issues are resolved.
Conclusion
With more games becoming online experiences over couch co-op, the social aspects of gaming are also more important today. While it is great to connect with a community of fans, there may be some bad actors in the mix from time to time. You can protect yourself by blocking other users whom you know to be malicious. There are also options to tweak your privacy settings to just not get messages, or you can choose not to get notifications for them.