Phone numbers are a little like fingerprints; they can reveal a lot virtually a person, for example, their proper noun or where they live. If you received a telephone call from a number you don't recognize, the post-obit resource tin help you identify the caller earlier y'all ring them back.

Several online tools let you reverse lookup and possibly identify who a phone number is registered to. Unfortunately, you'll probably run into several limitations with any phone number identification:

  1. If someone added their number to the National Do Not Telephone call Registry or had information technology removed from a site like WhitePages, information technology volition exist difficult to trace that phone number.
  2. It's almost impossible to detect out the identity of the person behind a mobile phone number for complimentary. Though with North American numbers, y'all tin can at to the lowest degree find where the number was registered.
  3. Moreover, many "free" services volition try to sell you their service, even if it is possible to detect the information for free elsewhere.
  4. Some countries, including the Britain and Australia, have restricted the opposite lookup of telephone numbers. So if you're trying to find a number from these countries, y'all're out of luck.
  5. Phone numbers can become out of service or change owners. Since it can have some time for a service to take hold of up on these changes, you can never fully rely on the data you discover online.

With those restrictions in mind, let'south expect at the all-time strategies to check for the origin or owner of a phone number.

1. Google

This is the brute force method of identifying a phone number, simply it's quick, like shooting fish in a barrel, and completely free. If the call is from an official or otherwise public source, a search engine similar Google or DuckDuckGo might come up with every final detail most the location and owner of the phone number.

The screenshot beneath, for case, shows the Google result when searching for the number of the National Do Not Call Registry.

Your Google search did not amount to much, so what side by side?

Bonus: Observe Out Where the Telephone Number Is From

Before you lot tin choose the all-time service to identify the possessor of a phone number, let's narrow it down to a specific location first. You tin skip this stride if yous recognize the country and area code. For automatic location lookup, you can as well skip ahead and try the showtime online tool listed below.

By and large, a North American phone number consists of 10 digits. The first three digits stand for the area lawmaking, meaning you can use these numbers to narrow down the location of the number. An easy fashion to do this is to type the 3 digits followed past the phrase "area code" into a Google search.

Information technology's a piffling more complicated if y'all've received a call from an international number. You should see a much longer number, including a country lawmaking, which can be anywhere from one (e.g. +one for U.s.a. and Canada) to three (e.thou. +506 for Costa rica) digits long.

Just equally outlined above, head over to Google, type in the number with the phrase "country lawmaking", and you'll get an instant answer. To find out more than virtually the number's location inside a country, you'll need to acquire more about how their phone numbers piece of work.

For example, area codes in Germany more often than not start with a zero and can be iii to v digits long, such as 030 for Berlin or 0711 for Stuttgart. In a long distance phone call from Germany (country code +49), however, the number should show up as +49-711-xxxxxx, i.e. omitting the zero from the expanse code.

At present that you lot have a better thought of where the phone number is from, choose a service that covers this location.

2. Whitepages

Location: North America

Whitepages is one of the most established online services to find people and phone numbers in the US. Apply this website to practise a reverse lookup for North American landline and mobile numbers. Simply enter the number in the Phone search field and hitting Enter.

If Whitepages does not have an entry, it volition requite you some bones details nearly the number, such as its location and spam or fraud risk.

Annotation: Whitepages offers monthly subscription packages for users located in the United states. Premium users volition gain access to additional information, like mobile phone numbers and full address history. This is ane of the more trustworthy services you'll encounter when trying to wait up a phone number online.

three. WhoCallsMe

Location: International, simply primarily North America

Do you suspect that you're receiving unsolicited calls from a scammer, telemarketer, or a pollster? Then this is the service yous should try. Enter the number in the search field and hit Search.

WhoCallsMe will tell you everything it knows about this number, including its location and any reports it has collected from other users. In one case you've entered a number, you tin contribute to the service's database by leaving your own notes about the caller.

4. Searchbug

Location: Northward America

This tool can quickly assistance yous look up the location of North American phone numbers. Simply type in the phone number, striking Search, and look for Searchbug's data on this number.

If they tin can't find a public record for this number, yous'll at least learn whether this is a toll-free, landline, or mobile number and mayhap where the caller is located.

Annotation: Searchbug volition attempt to charge you for additional data, like the total proper noun of the possessor of the phone number, though you might be able to observe information technology for gratis online.

5. NumberVille

Location: International

This site is similar to Searchbug, only it works with international numbers, likewise. It appears to offer more data for free, including current and past addresses associated with a telephone number; we suspect it pulls this data from Whitepages

We besides had the impression information technology was more upwardly-to-date than its competitors, such as ReversePhoneLookup or SpyDialer.

Note: NumberVille will log and publicly display your IP accost, so you better use a VPN if you want to stay anonymous.

6. NumLookup

Location: International

NumLookup builds on direct partnerships with telecom companies effectually the world, including AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile. Each time someone enters a phone number, they make a realtime API call to identify the owner's name. For us, this didn't work with numbers from Canada, USA, or Germany, simply the service correctly identified the number'south location.

Note: NumLookup displays a public list of recent phone number searches. While our numbers didn't show up in that list, yours may.

vii. SpyDialer

Location: The states simply

SpyDialer will actually telephone call the number you lot enter to record voicemail or verify the line is agile. This is the only services that managed to identify the owner of the phone number we used for testing.

Where other services claimed the information wasn't available, SpyDialer actually had the right proper name on record.

Did You Manage to Place the Phone Number?

Information technology'due south not easy to find the owner of a phone number, including their proper name and location. Just hopefully, you have a better thought of who'southward given y'all an unsolicited call. If yous're still looking for results, try one of these reverse phone lookup sites.

Have yous been on the receiving end of spam calls? Learn how to block those unwanted calls one time and for all.

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Are you tired of being chosen by prerecorded messages and robots? Here'southward why that happens and what you can practise to stop them.

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About The Author

Tina Sieber (842 Manufactures Published)

While completing a PhD, Tina started writing near consumer technology in 2006 and never stopped. Now also an editor and SEO, you can find her on Twitter or hiking a nearby trail.

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