Most of the men you meet here will be fine. Some will be boring, a few will be too much, and once in a while someone will cross a line. The site gives you three tools for that: mute, block and report.

They do very different things, and picking the right one saves you hassle.

Mute: a break, quietly

Mute is for the man who hasn't done anything wrong. He posts too much, or you need some distance after a fling.

Open his profile, tap ⋯, then Mute. You can also tap ⋯ on one of his posts and choose Mute @username. Then choose how long: For 24 hours, For 7 days, For 30 days or Until I unmute.

His posts leave your feeds and his comments collapse. His likes, comments and follows stop notifying you. Everything else stays as it was. He can still see your profile and posts, you still follow each other, he can still find you on Radar, and he can still message you. Your messages with him aren't affected.

He isn't told. To undo it, tap Unmute on his profile or go to Settings › Privacy & safety › Muted people.

Block: a closed door

Block is for when you want no contact at all.

From his profile, tap ⋯, then Block, and confirm. In a chat, tap Chat options, then Block. On a message request, Block & report does both at once.

Blocking cuts contact both ways, straight away:

• He can't view your profile, follow you, message you or interact with your posts.
• You stop seeing his posts, comments and notifications.
• Follows, likes, bookmarks and feed entries between you are removed, both ways.
• You're hidden from each other on Radar and in search.
• He's removed from any live broadcast of yours, and any call between you ends.

We don't send him a notification. If he tries to open your profile, though, he'll see that you've blocked him.

You can change your mind in Settings › Privacy & safety › Blocked people. Follows that were removed don't come back, so you'd each need to follow again. Blocking someone has the full detail.

Report: when he broke the rules

Mute and block protect you. A report tells the moderators someone is breaking the community guidelines.

You can report a profile, post, story, comment, message, circle, event or On Air chat message. Tap ⋯ (or the flag), choose Report, pick the reason under What's the issue?, add a few words, and tap Submit Report. The note is optional, but whoever reviews it may not see what you saw, so it helps.

In a chat, Chat options then Report reports the whole conversation. To report one message, open its actions (tap More, or press and hold on a phone) and tap Report. You can report a message only in a chat you're part of, and disappearing messages can still be reported after they've gone.

Reports are confidential. The person you report is never told who reported him. You can follow each one on My Reports, and you get a notification when there's a decision. Reports about someone underage, self-harm or violence are looked at first.

Reporting is for rule-breaking. Reporting someone just to get him banned is itself against the guidelines.

Which one, then

• He's fine, you just need a break: mute.
• You never want to hear from him again: block.
• He did something against the rules: report, and block too if you want no contact.

Keep the door narrow to begin with

Some trouble never reaches you if you set things up first. In Settings › Privacy & safety, Who can message you sets who can start a new chat with you: Everyone, People I follow or No one new. With Everyone, men you don't follow land in Requests, where you can read their messages without them knowing until you reply. From there you can Accept, Block & report or Delete.

New accounts that haven't verified their ID are also limited in how many new people they can message a day, which keeps most spam out of your inbox. More in who can message you.

Where to go next

The safety checkup puts all of this on a few short screens, including who you've muted and blocked. It takes about two minutes. And if you're about to meet someone off the site, Meeting a man from the site walks through the rest.