What Can a Cell Number Lookup Find?

Key Takeaways

• Spokeo’s reverse phone lookup is an industry-leading tool for tracking down info based on a cell number.
• A paid reverse phone lookup can surface dozens of points of information about the owner of a phone number.
• You might use a cell phone lookup for anything from scam avoidance to reforging social connections, and tons of reasons in between.

Look, if you’re doing some online digging, you can always pop a cell phone number into Google and see what turns up. But if we’re being honest here, you’re unlikely to find what you’re looking for. Google and similar popular search engines are mostly sourcing phone numbers from the front-facing internet, so if the number you’re seeking isn’t tied to a business or hasn’t been featured on a website that the search engines have crawled, you’re going to come up dry.

Enter the reverse phone lookup, courtesy of Spokeo. If you’re serious about finding the person who belongs to your mystery digits, and potentially learning a whole heap of additional info about them, we’ll take the deep dive for you. 

What Is a Reverse Phone Lookup?

Think of a Google search, or a search from similar engines, as a surface-level query — the tip of the iceberg, if you will. A service like Spokeo that offers a specialized reverse phone number lookup delves way below the surface of what’s easily accessible to the casual searcher, uncovering all that harder-to-find public data.    

How It Works

A typical reverse phone lookup on Spokeo has just three basic steps:

1. Head to Spokeo.com and enter the cell phone or landline number you’re curious about in the Reverse Phone Lookup field (you’ll also see tabs for searching by name, email, or address — those work, too).
2. Hit the “Search Now” button and check out the results you get from a free Reverse Phone Lookup search.
3. Review the available options for purchasing a report containing the full extent of what Spokeo was able to find. Upon purchase, you’ll gain access to additional public data found for that number, which may include the owner’s name, location, and associated social media profiles.

All of this happens in an instant, but what’s going on behind the scenes? When you type that cell number (or email, landline, name, or address) into a Spokeo search, we scour through over 3.9 billion historical records, 6 billion public consumer records, 130 million property records, 89 million business records, 600 million court records, and more than 120 social networks to find identifying information associated with that number — all in a few blinks of an eye. 

What Can a Reverse Phone Lookup Find? 

So now we know that we can find a person by phone number, how to do it, and that a Spokeo Reverse Phone Lookup trawls through an absolute ton of data. But exactly what sort of information does a reverse phone lookup bring to the surface? 

Whose phone number is this? Easy. Can you find an address by phone number? Sometimes. How about court records? Maybe so. Social media profiles? You bet. Even with a free search, a Spokeo reverse phone number lookup might surface the city, state, age, relatives, and basic location history of the person associated with the number. 

Beyond that, we’ll offer you the option to sign up for a Spokeo subscription to access granular advanced search results. Of course, the amount, types, and specificity of the data vary per phone number, but with a Spokeo reverse phone lookup scanning billions of records, here are some categories of public information your sleuthing (well, our sleuthing for you, really) might turn up:

• A name, or names, associated with the number
• Aliases
• Location history, including current and past addresses
• Address that the cell number is registered to
• Other associated phone numbers
• Cell phone carrier
• Associated email addresses
• Age
• Marital status and marriage records
• Property owned
• Family, relatives, and associates 
• Social media accounts (including Twitter and Facebook), and profile info such as usernames
• Profiles on dating sites like Match and OkCupid
• Gaming, media, and music accounts, including YouTube, Vimeo, Flickr, PhotoBucket, and more
• Shopping accounts on popular sites like Amazon, eBay, and others
• Blogging accounts on sites such as Blogger and LiveJournal
• Available criminal records, which could include DUIs and sex offenses (additional fees may apply)

Phone Reputation Score

While other paid sites also offer reverse phone lookups, only Spokeo provides a proprietary Phone Reputation Score. Using a combo of all that juicy data we’ve already covered and a massive database of metadata from our partnerships with phone carriers (we go way back), our Phone Reputation Score is exactly what it sounds like: an assessment of how reputable, or potentially disreputable, any given phone number might be.  

Take it from our CEO and founder, Harrison Tang, who says:

“Spokeo’s Phone Reputation Score feature leverages the company’s proprietary algorithm created by our team of top data scientists to detect patterns within the data that can indicate a high likelihood of recent scam and illicit activity. The combination of our algorithm and the crowd-sourcing of user feedback on these phone numbers presents a powerful way to combat scam calls.” 

Basically, we’ll tell you how suspicious we think that cell number is or isn’t, in simple, data-driven terms. 

Why Use Cell Phone Lookup? 

Most commonly, the reasons for performing a reverse phone lookup fall into two basic categories: for safety and for social connections. 

For Safety and Scams

Here are just a few of the ways you can use a reverse phone lookup to protect yourself or a loved one:

• Prevent being scammed by verifying who a number really belongs to.
• Stop unwanted calls and texts by confirming that a number belongs to a spam or scam caller, and safely blocking that number.
• Learn more about online sellers before you buy from them.
• Find out if you’re getting catfished by a bae that seems too good to be true, or is stringing you along in an LDR (long-distance relationship).
• Verify if the invoice you received in your inbox, complete with official-looking branding and phone number, is from a legit company or organization.
• Confirm your suspicion that the sketchy-sounding call from the “IRS” or “DMV” (two extremely common grifts) is actually from a scammer, and dodge that scam.
• Same deal with the employment scams currently on the rise – find out if that too-good-to-be-true job offer is actually from the company it claims to be. 
• Verify the contact info of other fishy (and phishy) looking cell contacts, from faux tech support to creepy cryptocurrency cold calls and beyond.

For Connections and Curiosity

It’s not all scary out there. Here are the ways Spokeo’s customers use reverse phone lookups to expand their worlds:

• Rekindle connections with friends and family who’ve fallen out of touch.
• Scratch the curiosity itch, and stop wondering who the heck that was who called you (sometimes, this falls into the safety category, too).
• Find out whatever happened to that ex who moved away.
• Check out what your old friends from high school are up to these days.
• Get back in touch with an old school teacher who changed your life in ways you’d love to share with them. 
• Finally stop replying “new phone, who’s this?” to unknown numbers when they text you (except for when you feel the need to be passive-aggressive).

Frequently Asked Questions about Reverse Phone Lookups

Can a reverse phone lookup show me text messages? 

Nope. Spokeo is a people-centric search engine that collects publicly accessible data on a deeply detailed level. We can’t view or collect data on private text messages, DMs, call logs, or the like. 

Is there a reverse phone lookup that’s free? 

Yep. Just hit up Spokeo’s homepage and try a cell or landline number. You’ll get free results first, then have the option to pay for an advanced report containing the rest of the search results. 

Why use a reverse phone lookup over a search engine?  

It takes less time, you’ll get more results, and you’ll get more types of information about the phone number you’ve looked up than typical search results. Plus, Spokeo also offers special filtering tools to help hone your search, and as an option, we can notify you of any updates when changes are made, or new info related to the report pops up. 

Of course, with a Spokeo Reverse Phone Lookup, there is one question you absolutely won’t be asking anymore: whose phone number is this, anyway? 

Dan is a freelance writer, small business owner, and full-time creative living in Dallas, TX. In 15 years of writing, he’s been fortunate to collaborate with companies and publishers like Cannabis and Tech Today, Healthfully, Salon.com, ArtBase, The Seattle Times, USA Today, SF Gate, and many more.