A reverse phone lookup is a popular way to find the owner of a particular phone number. There are several reasons to do a lookup. Commercial callers, or telemarketers, may be disturbing you, or you just may need an address for someone when all you know is their phone number. Generally, results will consist of the owner’s name and address. You can find plenty of websites that offer searches. Some charge a fee to view results while others are completely free.
Here we will look at how to perform a search for free.
The easiest phone numbers to lookup are business or residential landlines. Landlines are basically phones that are not cell phones. The places to start with these types of numbers are whitepages.com for residential numbers and yellowpages.com for business numbers. Go to the site and type the phone number where indicated. They will search their database, and if the number is listed, you will see the results in a few seconds. Listings on these sites will show a name and address with the phone number, or some combination of those three.
Reverse lookups on toll free numbers are also relatively simple to do for free. These may not always be telemarketers since anyone can register an 800 number. If you are receiving repeated, unsolicited calls from this type of number and would like them to stop, you can find the owner or business entity and contact them directly.
Whocalled.us is a site that lists toll free numbers that have received a complaint. You can visit their site and check to see if the 800 number calling you is listed in their directory. If so, you will see results similar to those available on the white and yellow pages sites. Using this site is completely free.
Now suppose the number is a cell phone, an unlisted number, or you do not know the type. There are still free avenues to discover the owner’s identity. The first place you should go is Google. Enter the phone number in the (777) 777-7777 format. For best results, use quotes around the query. If the number appears on an indexed web page, that page should show in the search results. There are more numbers available this way than you would generally think. Numerous social networking sites such as Facebook and LinkedIn have phone numbers on profiles. Many times the number will show up in a forum or message board site, especially if it is a commercial caller.
Most times you will find that free results are lacking and that it is time consuming to search this way. The other option is a paid directory. You can perform a search the same way you would with the free sites. If there is a match in the database, you will have the option of purchasing a report that displays the owner name, address, location details, carrier information, and people search results.
If you do not really care if you find the owner or address, the free sites are the best place to start mainly because you have nothing invested. If you are serious about finding information for a particular phone number, the paid lookup reports are well worth the small, onetime fee.
Jack Cash has performed several reverse phone lookups, both free and paid. He got his best results with providers that offer a no match, no pay policy.
