You know what can be really awkward? Being bumped into by certain people you know on Tinder, like bosses, teachers, family members, or exes. To mitigate that problem, Tinder will soon roll out a new feature that lets users block people on their phone’s contact list from matching with them or viewing their profiles.
Fewer awkward Tinder run-ins
Tinder outlined how the entire process works in an announcement post. In short, you can access the “Block Contacts” section from your settings menu. From there you can either opt-in to let the app access your full contact list and select the names of those you’d rather not have potentially seeing your romance-seeking escapades, or you can manually input individual people’s contact details without handing over your full list.
Tinder explains that even if you opt in to having your contact list displayed by the app, once it’s closed the only info it retains are the contacts you’ve blocked. Blocked contacts won’t be notified of their new barrier to your profile, and blocking someone doesn’t affect existing matches or messages.
There are a few stipulations worth mentioning. For one, blocking someone from your contact list doesn’t mean they actually have a Tinder profile at all, so this is really more of a preventative than a reactive measure. And naturally, if you block someone but use different contact information to the details they used to sign up to the app with, or if they change their own details or open a new account with different contact details, they’ll be able to see and/or match with you again.
It’s a handy feature users have been asking for for a while. Tinder’s recently been improving itself with similar tools and tricks, like a stricter process to prove you aren’t a catfish, and a new prompt aiming to prevent people from flinging abuse about the platform.