If you have a missed call from an unknown phone number, you may want to identify the phone number of the person who tried to reach you before you dial that number. Chances are you’re hooking up with a telemarketer. Eventually some random person simply dialed the wrong number. Or it’s your long lost best friend who finally found you. You never know.
There are several free online tools to reverse lookup and identify a North American phone number. However, with cell phone numbers it’s almost impossible to find out the identity of the person behind the phone number. Unless you are willing to pay.
Sadly, most seemingly free services will redirect you to a paid option, even if it’s possible to find the information for free elsewhere. To avoid these pitfalls, I have compiled a list with services for reverse phone number search and how to use them.
1. WhoCallsMe? (Worldwide)
The database at WhoCallsMe? is supplied by its users. So if you have been receiving unsolicited calls from telemarketers, surveyors, charities or other organizations, help others avoid these people by entering their phone number and details into WhoCallsMe?’s database.
A similar page is Who Called Us.
2. Google PhoneBook (North America)
For North American landline numbers, Google is an excellent choice to identify a phone number. For listed US numbers, Google may return a phonebook result that looks like this:Now you could directly go to one of your local online phone books. Which one you choose of course depends on where you are. Unfortunately, I can’t list one for each country. Besides, reverse phone number search is restricted in and unavailable for several countries, including Australia and the UK.
The following four sites are for Canada and Germany. They basically all work the same – you find the reverse lookup option, enter the number, and hit search. So without further comments, here it goes…
3. 411 (Canada)
4. Canpages (Canada)
5. Das Telefonbuch (Germany)
6. Das Örtliche (Germany)
But what if you’re trying to identify a cell phone number? Honestly, I could not find a free tool for identifying the owner of a given number.
However, due to the nature of North American cell phone numbers, the prefix reveals the location of the caller. The most you can find out for free on top of that, is the name of the provider and when the number was registered.
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