I often discover that my access to a SA member's profile is unavailable. When you try to click on that profile you get this message:

"Profile not found.That user's profile can no longer be found. The member might have deactivated their account, been suspended, or blocked you."

Well I would like to know which it is!  Did they block me?  Are they deactivated? I sent their support team a message inquiring about this and was told they don't specify which it is in order to protect the member's privacy.  Which seems kinda odd to me.  Where exactly is the privacy issue?

Otoh, you can easily tell if a girl is online or not if you sort your search results by most recently active. Now, that actually does seem to invade their privacy! Sometimes a SB will say they can't meet you because they are at work or something and then you see they are browsing SA online right now. Sure, there are other explanations, but if they are avoiding you they might not want you to know they are online.

It just seems like SA's privacy policies are inconsistent.  

 

 

I think the choices that SA Admin have made regarding member privacy are quite odd and inconsistent. One the one hand if you discover you no longer have access to a girl's profile they won't tell you if she'd gone or if she's blocked you. I think you have the right to know but when I askd hem they say it's for members' privacy.

If in your message history you see the circle with a line through it... they blocked you.  If its a ghost image they deactivated.  

Otherwise, no way to know.  

FWIW its common in all online dating media to not notify you when you've been blocked so as to prevent retaliation.

On my message list there are several that show a circle with a line through it, which you say means they blocked you. But one of those is a SB who told me she was going to deactivate her account and asked me to stay in touch and gave me her email, which I've used to exchange messages with her.  So I know she did not block me. When I review our messages on SA at the bottom it now says "Unable to send a message as user is no longer active." I don't recall ever seeing a ghost image.

Agree, an SB I had been in contact with said she was leaving the state and was deactivating her account. In my message history it shows the circle with the line through it, but I don't think she blocked me because she gave me her email address so we can stay in touch and plan on meeting  up when she's back in town

You can ask a buddy to search for the SB in question.  If he finds her and you can't, she has blocked you.  As an alternative, create a second, free profile and use it to do your research.  Change your identity and even your city, so no one can associate that profile with your real profile.  You may need a second email address (or not), but that's easy enough to do.

I use hushmail and you can easily create dummy emails. I got the circle with line on SB that stood me up and when I checked for her under my dummy account she was nowhere to be found.

Funny thing about her was first time we meet I noticed her eyes were really "shifty" and I even thought about it several times. The fact she stood me up wasn't a big surprise.

I've actually done the buddy search idea and in that case discovered that the SB had indeed deactivated her account, not blocked me. As for the other idea about the fake profile, I'm not comfortable doing that. If enough guys did that, the ratio of fake to real SD profiles would rise to some critical mass at which point the girls would notice that SA was less useful and more annoying than it should be. Let's not do that, k?  I know that if I began to think that lots of the SB profiles on SA were fake I'd be pissed.

OK, so I am apparently the guy with lots of time on my hand who had also set up both fake SD and SB profiles (both have since been deactivated in addition to my real main SD account). For the benefit of the de facto SD community residing in this sliver of the TER enclave, here are the findings:

1- Ghosted image = account deactivated

2- Redlined through = your a** has been blocked, irrespective of what the b*tches tell you. Fact!  

Sometimes, they just block on a whim because something doesn't sit right with them and then when they decide to restart communicating with you, they forget to unblock you on SA! Just be aware of their shenanigans and don't fall for their BS.

3- After a SB logs out or signs off, SA still will show the profile for being online for up to an hour. That seems to be their method of padding their active SB numbers. I verified this at least 3 times when I had signed in with my fake SB account, while monitoring the fake SB account with my fake SD account!  

Why was I compelled to explore this? My Unicorn was mentioning to me that she was not NECESSARILY fishing for any new SDs but merely signing on every few days or so to merely check her inbox. Now we have an open arrangement and we are NOT exclusive for the paltry amount which I allow her but I was wondering as to why the profile seemed to show as active online while she had just supposedly signed on to read / respond / delete email. I had a hunch that SA was playing hooky with the stats so I ran this simple test because another POT SB who was also seemingly very busy to be online all the time had also told me that she would just sign on briefly to check email but them for some reason would keep getting an onslaught of newer email after just signing on for very brief periods. She had "concluded" that the site was populated with desperate, horny, pervy older guys!!!

4- The above also rings true for SD accounts (I also tested that theory) but the profile would not show staying active anywhere near the length of time with the SB profile. IIRC, about 15-20 minutes max.

Hope these unscientific findings are of a bit of use to some of you!

I am sure that is "Inaccurate" I have just had an SB come back and reactivate her account after having it down for a couple of months. She told me in advance she was moving away to take a better job and would be deactivating her account and sure enough one day I did get the circle with the line through it that you are talking about. She came back to town a few days ago, reactivated her account and reached out to me.

Two points to mention here, the "ghost" image doesn't mean the account is deactivated, it simply means she doesn't have a picture attached. Secondly, up until a few months ago SA did show if you were blocked or if the SB had deactivated her account, they changed things up a few months ago. I personally liked it better the old way, but they didn't ask me. lol

exactly what you mean by ghosted images and redlined? When I look at my messages list I see several where instead of the expected profile picture I see a grey box that contains a darker grey circle with a line throught it.  It is all shades of grey, no red. I've never seen any other image and don't know what you mean by the two distinctly different terms you used.

SM, let me clarify:

when someone blocks you (the general version) their profile will simply not show up on one's search by their moniker or keyword search in the same way that their profile will not show up on your searches if you have put them on the blocked list!

If you go through your messages, the one's which are deactivated will be displayed in grey while the ones who have blocked you will show as a red line through a grey image, IIRC. SA will not divulge as to who has blocked you but you can find out if you have kept all the persons whom you have corresponded with in the past.

Thanks! I've never seen the red line so I guess I've never been blocked!