How to Find Out Who Owns a Phone Number with Reverse Lookup

There are a few times in our lives that we may need to know who owns a certain telephone number. I can think of several such occasions including:

If someone keeps calling you and doesn't leave a message and you want to know who it is.

If someone is prank calling you and you want to make them stop.

If you find an old number lying around and you're not sure who it belongs to.

If you suspect your husband or wife is cheating and you notice a strange number on his or her cell phone.

Whatever your reasons are, this article will teach you how to track down information on the number's owner.

The first thing you should try is a free method that uses popular search engines such as Google, Yahoo, or MSN. Simply go to the main page of your favorite search engine and run a query on the phone number. For best results enter the number in standard phone number form and in quotes, like this:

"(555)555-5555"

This will ensure the search engine looks for a string of numbers in exactly that order. Without quotes, the results may contain any page that includes those numbers in any form. In other words, you'll have to dig through all sorts of irrelevant results to find what you need.

While this method is free, the results are not always accurate. It will find many residential and some business phone numbers, but cellular and unlisted numbers will not be found. For these types of numbers you have to hope that the owner left his or her contact info somewhere on a website, blog, or social networking site like MySpace.

If your search is a failure, you'll have to try a paid reverse lookup service. These are sites that have access to the databases of telephone companies and cell phone carriers. For a small fee, they will search the databases for you to find details on the registered owner of any phone number. Though this method is not free, the odds of success are greater and the information gathered is more detailed.