If I block another iPhone user, can they look at our past messages before the block?

Hey brycepeterhans,

Sounds like you recently blocked another iPhone user and want to know if they can still see your past messages.

The answer to this is yes, they absolutely can. Blocking someone has no impact on the conversation history. It only prevents this person from contacting you moving forward.

For more information, please review the following resource: Block phone numbers, contacts, and emails on your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch

We hope this information clears things up for you.

Have a great day!

brycepeterhans,

While something may have happened to your wife's messages, being blocked by someone would not be the reason for this. The only thing that will happen when you attempt to send a message to someone who has blocked you is that the message will not go through as iMessage and if you have "Send as SMS" enabled and an active SMS plan with your wireless carrier, it'll eventually send as an SMS or text message but the other contact will not actually receive it.

We hope this information helps out. As for your wife's messages, she can restore a backup containing those messages if they aren't stored in iCloud. If the messages were synced with iCloud, then they won't be retrievable at this point.

For more information on using iCloud to manage messages, as well as restoring a backup if not doing so to attempt to restore the missing messages, please review the following resources:

Restore your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch from a backup

Use Messages in iCloud

Thanks for using Apple Support Communities.

Take care!