Keep receiving calls from numbers you don’t recognize? This post shows the best ways to identify the mysterious caller before you ring them back.

1. Run a Google Search

There’s nothing simpler than using Google when you want to look up a phone number – just type the phone number into the search box and hit Enter to get a list of associated results.

If the number you look up belongs to a business or has ever been listed on a blog, website, or public job profile, Google can easily bring up the results for you.

Google only shows you what’s publicly available online – if you didn’t get much useful information from your searches, consider using dedicated reverse phone lookup tools.

2. Use Reverse Phone Lookup Tools

Reverse phone lookup tools are websites that are built specifically for finding cell phone number information, and they can get access to records that a common search engine can’t. These tools gather only people-related information, including names, phone numbers, addresses, employment history, education history, relatives, social network profiles, criminal records, etc.

You can use a cell phone lookup tool in two ways: to look up a name associated with a phone number, or to do the opposite – locating someone’s phone number by searching for some other information you know about the person if you know their name, email, username or address.

While there are many number lookup services online, not every one of them provides updated or accurate results. Below is a list of the best reverse phone lookups that came up on top during our tests.

• Whitepages – It’s Free
• Intelius
• Social Catfish
• TruthFinder

Just type the phone number into these tools and they will gather information about the caller in one report. This might also flag up blacklisted numbers making it easier for you to tell if a call is a phone scam. A detailed report from these websites might look like this:

3. Check Social Networks

As many social media platforms allow users to find friends based on their contacts, you can take advantage of the feature to see if you can locate the phone number owner’s social network profiles, then do some more digging on that specific site to learn whose the owner is and maybe even find their photos or other contact information like a physical address.

Social networks that can connect you to your contacts include Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and more. Just log into your account on any of these websites and find the Contacts Syncing option to upload your contact list to the platform. Your contact list will later be used to recommend accounts for you to follow; just look through the list to see if you can find the profile you’re looking for.

Obviously, this method requires some time and patience, but if you don’t feel like spending your time looking for some profile you may or may not find, consider using a professional reverse phone lookup service like Intelius.

Summary

Finding out who a phone number belongs to involves doing a reverse search where you enter the phone number to see which names come up as being associated with it. 

While this lookup technique is possible, not all phone numbers are traceable. If you still come up empty-handed after using these phone number search tools, you might have to just give up.

In fact, some services allow you to create temporary phone numbers for calling and texting, leaving next to no chance of finding out who is behind these numbers.