Find out the owner of a phone number?
 

Does anyone know of a way to find out the owner of a cell phone if you know their number? I see many sites for reverse lookups for cell phones but they charge almost 100 bucks.

All of the free reverse phone number sites have a fee after you put in the phone number. Anywho.com or whitepages.com or any of that stuff does not work since you have to pay to get a report.

Are there any ACTUAL free ones out there?

Figure out what provider it is from, go to a cell phone kiosk booth for that provider, ask to get a bill print out. THey ask you phone #, typically they'll just be like "George?" asking if thats your name, agree and tada. They print you out a bill that will have a name on it.

Otherwise dont expect much help if you at any point say its not you.

The things I said above are probably illegal.

Ring the number and say "Hi this is the phone company, can you just answer a couple of security questions - first what is your name, second what is the first line of your address, and your security password."

Then hang up.

Intuitive thinking such as this makes me wonder how often you use it for constructive and well-meaning purposes. :D


I'd do it!

Let me guess... you are wondering who keeps calling your girlfriend's cell when you aren't there?

You've got to either be clever with social engineering, or have the money to pay for someone who can do it for you. That $100 rate is for people who don't even care to search the internet for good sources ;) You could easily find a place who will do it for a lot less, like $15 - $25.

For cell phones, there's not going to be any sort of legitimate free internet lookup or anything. Landlines are much simpler. Also what complicates things for mobile numbers is Wireless Local Number Portability (WLNP) which means you can normally figure which switch a number was originally homed off of, but not necesarily anything else because they ported their number. However if they did port their number, then it will generally just give you an idea of the metro area where the line was first bought. If you give me the area code and exchange (first 6 digits), I can tell you the original account calling area. But if they had their number ported, who knows...

BTW why do you want this info?? I get nuisance calls all the time, why don't you just ignore them!! Or program that number out of your phone, if that's what's going on.

I did this by calling and acting liek I was extremely aggrivated, it was obviously some young girl who was easily intimidated when I told her something like "No I'm not wasting my fucking time with this security bullshit I want to know why the fucking bill is 100 dollars more than last month!!"

After that she kept saying "Mr. Toland I'll look into that for you, Yes Mr. toland ... etc.."

Then I was like " Listen woman I work for a living you call me by my first name got it? "



You can just call back a few times until you get someone you can intimidate. It's really easy.