You may receive a telephone call from a phone number you don't recognise, and will probably ask yourself, whose phone number is this - especially if you get several anonymous calls from the same phone number. Or perhaps you found a phone number on your spouse or partner's cell phone, or written down on a scrap of paper in their wallet or purse, and you're suspicious of who they might have been talking to. There are several reasons why you might want to find out whose phone number it is, but how do you do so?
In order to find out who a phone number belongs to, you should use a reverse phone number lookup. First of all, what is a Reverse Phone Number Lookup? Well, basically it's a website-based system where you type in a phone number, and it tells you the name and address of the person who the phone number belongs to. Simple as that. There are quite a few on the internet if you search for them, but like anything, some are better than others, and you usually get what you pay for.
A Reverse Phone Search is by far the best way to find who owns a telephone number. About a year ago I needed to find out who was calling my girlfriend, so I wondered, how do I find who owns a telephone number? The caller never spoke, but just called repeatedly, often late at night, or while she was at work. It was worrying for her, because the caller knew her home phone number, work phone number, and cell phone number. Luckily because of my background in telecoms, I knew the best way was to use a Reverse Phone Lookup, but I did try a few other things first.
First off, as a long shot, I typed the number into the Google search engine - there was a slight chance I might find something, especially if the caller had put their phone number on a website, or if it was a business number.
My next attempt was to find a free reverse phone directory. There are several available on the internet - again I used Google to find them. I selected what I thought was the best site, and keyed in the number. There was always the chance that the number was listed, and would have told me what I wanted to know, including the name and the entire address of the owner.
Unfortunately in this case, I was unlucky, and needed to try a slightly different approach.
I turned out in the end that the reason I was unsuccessful was because the number was a mobile phone. Cell phone numbers aren't held in a freely available central database, so the free reverse phone lookup sites I tried couldn't provide the information I needed.