If you’re like me, you have one or more friends who are heavy users of Foursquare, Gowalla, or some other “check in” app on their cellphone. Each one of these check ins shows up on your Facebook wall, and as far as you’re concerned it’s all just spam. Do I really care that someone I used to work with several years ago and who lives on the other side of the U.S. just went to McDonald’s for lunch? Nah.

So in Facebook, you can click the little X next to the wall post, and get this dropdown:

How tempting is it to report that as spam?

There’s “Hide all by Gowalla” — bingo! Click and Facebook says…

They lie!

I’ve clicked on that option about 100 times, and every time I check Facebook, there are a ton of Gowalla posts from this user. They won’t go away. GG on the bug, Facebook. I bet I don’t have this problem on Google+.

Here’s how to actually block an app on Facebook. Go to the Facebook search field, and find the app. In this case, I searched for gowalla and spotted this:

Click on the Gowalla App to go to that page, and scroll down until you see this in the bottom of the left hand column:

Click Block App and it gets actually blocked.

If you want to see what apps you’ve blocked, or if you want to unblock an app, go to Account –> Privacy Settings. Under Block Lists click on the Edit your lists link.

My blocked apps include:

I know, I’m a scrooge. Now you can be one, too.