Telephone numbers are a little like fingerprints; they can reveal a lot about a person, for case, their name or where they alive. If you received a call from a number you don't recognize, the post-obit resources tin can assist you identify the caller earlier yous ring them dorsum.

Several online tools let you reverse lookup and peradventure identify who a telephone 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 Call Registry or had it removed from a site like WhitePages, it will exist difficult to trace that phone number.
  2. It's about incommunicable to discover out the identity of the person behind a mobile phone number for gratis. Though with North American numbers, you tin at to the lowest degree find where the number was registered.
  3. Moreover, many "free" services will endeavour to sell yous their service, even if it is possible to find the information for free elsewhere.
  4. Some countries, including the Great britain and Commonwealth of australia, have restricted the reverse lookup of phone numbers. So if you're trying to notice a number from these countries, you're out of luck.
  5. Phone numbers tin can go out of service or change owners. Since it can accept some time for a service to catch upwards on these changes, you tin can never fully rely on the data you find online.

With those restrictions in heed, let's look at the best strategies to bank check for the origin or owner of a telephone number.

ane. Google

Searching for a phone number on Google.

This is the beast force method of identifying a phone number, but it's quick, easy, and completely free. If the call is from an official or otherwise public source, a search engine like Google or DuckDuckGo might come up with every last detail about the location and owner of the phone number.

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

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

Bonus: Notice Out Where the Phone Number Is From

Before yous can choose the all-time service to place the owner of a phone number, let's narrow it downward to a specific location first. You tin skip this step if you recognize the country and area lawmaking. For automatic location lookup, yous can also skip alee and try the first online tool listed below.

Mostly, a N American phone number consists of 10 digits. The first three digits represent the area lawmaking, meaning yous can utilize these numbers to narrow down the location of the number. An piece of cake way to exercise this is to blazon the three digits followed by the phrase "area code" into a Google search.

Searching for the area code of a phone number on Google.

It's a little more than complicated if you've received a call from an international number. You lot should see a much longer number, including a country code, which can be anywhere from one (e.g. +1 for USA and Canada) to iii (e.g. +506 for Republic of costa rica) digits long.

But every bit outlined above, caput over to Google, type in the number with the phrase "country code", and y'all'll get an instant respond. To find out more than about the number'southward location within a country, y'all'll need to learn more about how their phone numbers work.

For case, area codes in Frg generally start with a nix and can be three to five digits long, such as 030 for Berlin or 0711 for Stuttgart. In a long distance call from Frg (country code +49), however, the number should show upwards as +49-711-xxxxxx, i.east. omitting the zero from the area code.

Now that you have a ameliorate thought of where the phone number is from, cull a service that covers this location.

2. Whitepages

Whitepages Phone Number Lookup offers people search, reverse phone and address looking

Location: North America

Whitepages is one of the virtually established online services to detect people and telephone numbers in the U.s.. Utilize this website to do a reverse lookup for Northward American landline and mobile numbers. Just enter the number in the Telephone search field and hitting Enter.

If Whitepages does not have an entry, information technology will requite yous some basic details about the number, such equally its location and spam or fraud risk.

Note: Whitepages offers monthly subscription packages for users located in the Us. Premium users will proceeds access to additional information, like mobile phone numbers and full address history. This is one of the more trustworthy services you'll run into when trying to look up a phone number online.

3. WhoCallsMe

WhoCallsMe Reverse Phone Lookup

Location: International, but primarily North America

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

WhoCallsMe will tell you everything it knows about this number, including its location and any reports it has collected from other users. Once yous've entered a number, you can contribute to the service'southward database by leaving your own notes most the caller.

4. Searchbug

Searchbug Names Numbers Now

Location: North America

This tool can quickly help y'all look up the location of Due north American telephone numbers. Simply type in the phone number, hit Search, and wait for Searchbug'southward data on this number.

If they can't find a public tape for this number, y'all'll at least larn whether this is a toll-free, landline, or mobile number and possibly where the caller is located.

Note: Searchbug volition try to charge you for additional information, like the full name of the possessor of the phone number, though you might exist able to find it for free online.

5. NumberVille

Search international phone numbers and find the owner and location.

Location: International

This site is similar to Searchbug, but it works with international numbers, too. It appears to offering more information for free, including current and past addresses associated with a telephone number; nosotros suspect it pulls this data from Whitepages

We also had the impression it was more up-to-appointment than its competitors, such as ReversePhoneLookup or SpyDialer.

Annotation: NumberVille will log and publicly brandish your IP accost, and so you amend utilize a VPN if you want to stay bearding.

6. NumLookup

Location: International

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

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

7. SpyDialer

SpyDialer results of a reverse phone number lookup

Location: Usa only

SpyDialer volition really telephone call the number you enter to record voicemail or verify the line is active. 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 bachelor, SpyDialer actually had the right proper noun on record.

Did You Manage to Identify the Phone Number?

It'due south not piece of cake to find the owner of a phone number, including their name and location. But hopefully, y'all have a better idea of who's given you lot an unsolicited call. If you're still looking for results, try one of these opposite phone lookup sites.

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