You have “unable to Receive Message – Message Blocking Is Active” popping up now and then on your phone, and you can’t tell why. But you’ve noticed recently that you are yet to receive messages.
It’s frustrating to miss out on important messages, get annoying popups, and you don’t know the reasons.
In an earlier article, we explained what the “Message blocking is active” message means. But in today’s article, we’ll also explain how you can correct the error if you can’t receive messages.
Why are Recipients Getting The “Unable to Receive Message – Message Blocking Is Active” Error?
First, the most common reason for the problem is your service provider has suspended your message service because you have an unpaid bill. But there are many other reasons you could be having this problem.
1. You’ve been blocklisted, or you blocked the sender.
You may have unknowingly added the person you are trying to receive messages to your phone’s block list. So, check your phone’s block list to remove a contact that’s not supposed to be there.
2. Parental control
It’s also possible that parental controls enabled on your iPhone prevent you from sending or receiving messages from the person. This problem could also be from the other end.
3. Unsuitable plan
Check with your service provider to confirm if the plans you subscribed to include message services. If your plan doesn’t include messaging service, you won’t be able to send or receive messages.
4. Operator issues
Additionally, carrier-specific issues are known to result in a Message Blocking is Active error on Android and iPhone devices. For example, T-Mobile has confirmed it has this problem. To troubleshoot this, T-Mobile suggests you update your time and date.
5. Exhausted SMS limit
If you have an SMS limit on your plan and have exhausted the number, you may also not be able to receive messages and start receiving error messages.
6. Unpaid bill
As I mentioned earlier, this will most likely be the reason for the error messages. However, it doesn’t have to be someone who blocked you. For example, your bill may be overdue, and your operator may have suspended your text messages.
Tips to Fix the “Unable To Receive Message – Message Blocking Is Active”
Next, I’ll list the most common solutions to the problem. This means I’ll review the possible solutions and suggest some basic steps to try.
Fix 1: Check your block lists
First, you need to check if you have blocked the person you are trying to message. You can find out by going to Settings > Phone > Blocked Contacts on your iPhone.
If you unknowingly blocked someone which you can find in the block list, you can remove them from the list. To do this, swap to the left and tap Unblock.
On Android
- On Android, go to your phone Settings and tap Accounts.
- Next, tap the email address you use for your phone and then Google Account on the next page.
- On the next page, swipe from the Home item to the left till you get to People & Sharing, scroll down and tap Blocked.
- If you have any currently blocked contact, you’ll see that here, and you can unblock them.
You should also ask the other person trying to send you a message if they blocked you on iMessage on iPhone or their Messages app on Android.
On Android, open your Messages and tap the three dots menu at the top right corner.
Tap Spam & Blocked. Tap the three dots menu at the top right corner again. Tap Blocked Contacts. You’ll see a list of contacts you’ve blocked from sending you messages.
To unblock any, tap the “x” sign in front of the number and tap Unblock.
After removing your number from your blocked list, you should be able to receive their messages again.
Fix 2: Free up your phone storage.
Start by checking if there is enough storage on your phone.
You’ll need at least 15 percent of free storage space on the iPhone to send an SMS.
Start by freeing up your storage space by deleting old photos and videos, redundant documents, and unused applications.
On the iPhone, you can do this by going to Settings > General > and then iPhone Storage.
On an Android, go to Settings > Storage, tap Internal Shared Storage, and check and delete media in files taking up space.
Fix 3: Check the content
Some users were able to get around this problem by asking the sender only to send plain texts in their messages. Also, your phone may have issues receiving multimedia messages (MMS). So check if the problem persists with standard SMS.
Fix 4: Ensure your phone has cellular network coverage
Start by turning off your mobile data and then turn it back on again. Next, proceed to Settings, and tap Cellular data.
Set your phone to data roaming if traveling internationally. To do this, go to your phone Settings, go to Cellular > Cellular Data Options and tap Data Roaming.
Fix 5: Reset your date and time
Remember I told you about T-Mobile recommending that you ensure your data and time are correct? So I suggest you automatically set your iPhone’s time and date.
When your iPhone has the wrong information, it might cause it to malfunction and bring up several other issues like the “Message blocking is active” error.
Fix 6: Remove and reinsert the SIM card.
If nothing works, you can remove the SIM card from the phone and put it back again. If there were any issues with the SMS services setup, a reinserted SIM card should do the job. Once you have configured the messaging services again, message blocking is active on the phone error will not appear.
Fix 7: Reset the phone
Finally, you can reset your phone and set things up from scratch if nothing else works. It will make sure the settings are back to how it was from the factory. But before you start, learn to back up your phone, so you don’t lose your data. Finally, if the problem persists, you can contact your mobile operator, request a text message update, or change your phone number.
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