Reverse Phone Lookup Fact and Fiction: A Practical Guide – CPP March Newsletter

Greetings, Cell-Phone-Plans.net members. The short month of February is behind us and March is underway. That means more great free and discounted cell phones on offer her at Cell-Phone-Plans.net as well as more definitive, useful guides on buying cell phones for seniors, affordable smartphones and cutting down on your cell phone bills. Read on to see what’s cooking here at CPP.

Reverse Phone Lookups: A Practical Guide

When strangers come calling on your cell phone, it can be disconcerting, annoying or simply drive you crazy with curiosity. Because of this, hundreds of so-called reverse phone lookup services have sprung up around the Internet. But here’s the thing: most of them are bunk. Here’s why:

• Cell phone numbers are not a matter of public record. You typically won’t find out who’s calling you unless it’s on a landline.
• If it is a landline, you should be able to find out who’s calling you through a simple Google search.
• There’s no such thing as a wireless 411 directory. T-Mobile, Verizon and the other cell phone plan bigwigs tried to get one going, but it failed. So, don’t worry about any crazy forwarded emails you get about cell phone numbers becoming public and opening the floodgates to non-stop telemarketing calls.

Most reverse phone lookup services are a bigger ripoff than FreeCreditReport.com (which is basically a tricky way to divert you from the real source for free credit reports: AnnualCreditReport.com). On most of these sites, you’ll be allowed to punch in the cell phone number in question and the site will spit back some teaser that’s supposed to be evidence that they have the information that you are looking for and ask for $9.95 to $39.95 to get the goods. But in reality, the information they give you is vague, general and oftentimes flat out wrong. I tried plugging my own cell phone number in the self-proclaimed best reverse phone lookup service and it told me that it belonged to a landline (wrong)  in Pittsburgh (obvious from the area code). In most cases, these paid directories are just portals to the same information you’d get from a LexisNexis search (which, in itself, is often inaccurate or incomplete when it comes to phone numbers).

Bottom-line: don’t waste your money on reverse phone lookups.

Instead, use good old common sense and some direct action to figure out who’s calling you. Here are a few better (and free) ways to figure out who’s calling you.

Whocallsme.com

This is one of my favorite sites because it crowdsources the task of identifying mysterious numbers. Rather than relying on overpriced, outdated public information, users come here to report what they found out when answering calls from unknown numbers. Most of the time, it’s a completely reasonable explanation: a car dealer following up on your service appointment, Comcast calling to upsell you on your cable service or some other telemarketing company that you unwittingly opted-in to receive calls from.  Whocallsme.com won’t always have information on the caller in question, but you have a much better chance of getting a real answer or enough viable clues for you to put the pieces together on your own.

Google

Most businesses, if they know what’s good for their web presence, will publish their phone number on their web page or in local business listings. Putting the phone number into Google with the proper formatting and quotes, such as “(555) 555-555″ just might pull up the florist or dentist or whoever it is that is calling you on the first page. Case closed.

Call them Back

Seems obvious, right? Of course, if they are actually someone you want to avoid – a debt collector, a stalker or your school’s alumni association, perhaps – you won’t want them to know its you calling. You can mask your identity by dialing *67 first, but this doesn’t always work (check with your cell phone provider about methods for blocking caller ID). Better yet: call from Skype and the number will be truly untraceable (especially if you don’t have SkypeIn). If it’s a business, they’ll either pick up the phone with a recording or by identifying themselves (”Libery Mutual, this is John, how may I help you?”) which solves the mystery immediately. At that point, you can hang up with your curiosity satisfied, but what you should do is firmly (but politely) request that that person not call you ever again.

Call the Cops

If the person who is calling you is harassing you or otherwise making you feel unsafe, go to the authorities. They are the ones with the actual authority and power to trace a number and they are the ones who can best handle your situation and keep you safe. Check out your privacy rights at this resource – they vary state-to-state.

Do Some Sleuthing

If you’re really invested in finding out who’s calling you, you can do some private investigation on your own. Phones Losers of America has some novel tips and tricks to do just this, but  be aware – some may be on the fuzzy edges of the law.

Hire a Private Eye

Find a bunch of strange numbers on your spouses cell phone bill and starting to suspect something is afoot? If you’ve got the cash, go ahead and hire a private investigator. It’ll cost a heckuva lot more than one of those scammy reverse phone lookup sites, but you’ll get real results and possibly more information than you ever wanted to know. Private investigators are also compelled to obey the law while researching your case as well. You can find a private investigator in your area by looking them up just like you would a plumber or attorney. Just make sure they are properly credentialed and legit.

At the end of the day, a vast majority of mystery numbers are telemarketers operating within the law (you probably gave up your info somewhere along the line and forgot about it) or wrong numbers (this dude from North Carolina named Brogan keeps calling me, thinking I’m someone else, probably because I inherited someone else’s number and the guy refuses to update his contact list. Also, some old woman keeps calling my wife and asking her to bring buns to dinner).  Instead of wasting your time and money trying to identify unknown or unlisted numbers, take some direct action. Answer the phone when it rings and remove yourself from opt-in lists (or better yet, avoid signing up in the first time). And for god’s sake, exercise some of your own due diligence before shelling out cash to someone who’s just going to sell you an electronic version of the white pages.

Hot Phones at Cell-Phone-Plans.net

Sales are up here at CPP, which means we must be stocking the phones you folks love. Need a new phone or looking to upgrade? Consider some of these phones that CPP readers are crazy about:

Motorola Droid - Yet another challenger to the iPhone throne, this powerful Android 2.0 phone is a true gamechanger in the smartphone space.

Samsung Mythic – The Samsung Mythic is a sleek multimedia phone with a spacious touchscreen and support for AT&T streaming media, such as live TV and video conferencing.

BlackBerry Curve – After all these years, BlackBerry is still the king of productivity. The Curve is the smallest full QWERTY BlackBerry to date.

Palm Pre Plus – The smartphone that’s “smart enough for mom” is now on Verizon with a few upgrades. We’re not sure why Verizon chooses to market this as a cell phone for women, since it’s an all around awesome 3G phone running Palm’s stunning webOS interface, making it perfect for business users, multimedia junkies and tech geeks alike.

Is your fave phone missing from the list? Tell us about it in the comments (or if you’re reading this from your email inbox, come visit us at the Cell Phones Blog and chime in).

Cell Phone Blog Posts You May Have Missed

We’ve covered lots of ground in February, and if you’re not a subscriber to our daily content, you may have missed some excellent posts. Catch up with these great reads:

• 5 Cool Cell Phone Apps for Women
• Top 5 Cell Phones for Women
• Consumer Cellular: How to Run a Cell Phone Company without Ripping Off Your Customers
• Top 5 Features to Look for in a Senior-friendly Cell Phone
• Valentine’s Day 2.0: Show Your Love with Cell Phones
• Netbook, Tablet or Smartphone: Which Do I Need?
• BlackBerry Sirius XM App Now Available

Interested in getting the CPP Newsletter in your inbox as soon as it’s available? Sign up below for weekly hot deals and great cell phone guides.

One Response to “Reverse Phone Lookup Fact and Fiction: A Practical Guide – CPP March Newsletter”

1. reverse record phone number search Says:
   June 21st, 2011 at 12:17 pm

   reverse record phone number search…

   Any idea if there are similar blogs like this related to reverse record phone number search?…

Leave a Reply

Name

Mail (will not be published)

Website