We all remember how easy it was in the old days to get rid of an annoying person or a spambot in MSN Messenger. You could just right-click on the contact and select “block” or “delete and block” and the problem was gone. Now, with Live Messenger, it’s a bit more complicated than that.
Lately I’ve been messaged by compromised contacts (spambots), who aren’t even in my visible contact list (at least I thought they weren’t), so I started searching for a way to get rid of them permanently. Long story short, here’s what you must do:
1) Open your Live Messenger main window, select “Tools” from the upper menu and then select “Options”. From left hand side, select “Privacy” and under settings, click “Edit settings”. It will open your Windows Live login page, sign in. You will see your privacy options. There are three preset privacy settings like “Public”, “Limited” and “Private”, then there is “My current settings” – I suggest you use that, it’s always the best option to configure your own privacy than let somebody else do it. Under “My current settings”, select “view current settings”. There you can choose who can search and see your profile, activities and who can contact you. However you choose to configure your settings, I strongly recommend you don’t choose any option after “Some friends (except limited access)” under “Who can contact me”. Friends, who have limited access, are basically blocked contacts. Save your settings.
2) Now that you’ve saved your privacy settings, it’s time to submit the friends you want to have limited access (or delete completely, see point 3). Choose “Messenger” from above and click “Contacts”. From the left side, under “Your friends”, choose “Manage access”. There you can add people to your block list or remove them from there. In the left column, enter the names of friends for whom you want to limit access and click “Limit access”. If you want to remove someone from that list, click on his/hers name in the right column and select “Grant access”.
Remember, this method is not effective unless you follow point nr. 1 (configuring your privacy settings so that friends with limited access can’t see or contact you).
3) There is a more straightforward way too. If you want to completely remove that contact, not just block, then you can delete it. Choose “Messenger” from above, go to “Contacts” – there you will see all the contacts associated with your Live Messenger account. I was surprised to see how many unknown and long forgotten contacts I still have there, even some random phone numbers. There you can easily search and delete the contact you want to get rid of. If your privacy settings don’t allow every person to contact you, then they shouldn’t be able to do that anymore.
I strongly suggest you set your settings as private as possible and clear your contact list of unknown people.
