Not so very long ago, it was hard to find out who was calling you. Sure, Caller ID could give you the number, but finding out who was behind the number was a project. If you were lucky your library might have a “reverse directory,” where you could look up the number and find the owner’s name and address. If you were really lucky it might only be a few years old (because print directories are dated before they ever leave the print shop). Otherwise, you might check the regular phone book for who you thought the caller might be, and see if the numbers matched.
It’s easier now because phone number data has been democratized and decentralized, and costly printed directories have been replaced with inexpensive, easy-to-use services like Spokeo’s. Knowing how to find the address of a phone number — and other pertinent information about its owner — has become an essential life skill, and we make it easy. Here’s how that works.
How to Find the Address Of a Phone Number with Spokeo
Spokeo makes it easy for you to find an address with a phone number. We have access to more than 12 billion public records, as well as public social media posts (we started as a social-media aggregator) and other public online and offline sources.
Who's Calling Me?
Search any phone number to learn more about the owner!
To get started, all you need is your mystery phone number. With that in hand, here are the steps to follow:
- Visit our Reverse Phone Lookup page (Pro tip: our home page’s search box is smart enough to recognize when you enter a phone number rather than a name, and will just do the correct search).
- Enter a 10-digit US phone number, and click the “search” button. Our proprietary search algorithm will take just a few seconds to comb through its billions of data sources, and, if it finds a match, return the information associated with that number.
- Review the current owner’s information, if you already have a Spokeo subscription. If you aren’t a subscriber you’ll see just a general location and the name of that subscriber’s phone carrier. Click the (highly visible!) buttons on-screen to sign up for a trial subscription.
If the address of the number’s current owner is all you’re looking for, that’s it! You’re done, in just three steps (four, if you needed to subscribe). But a lot of the time you won’t necessarily know who this person or company is, and why they called you. Looking more deeply into the search results can tell you that.
What Can You Learn From Spokeo’s Search Results?
Knowing how to find an address with a phone number is the easy part. Sometimes you may also want to dig into the other information associated with that phone number, as well.
The data you’ll find in your search results may include:
- The owner’s first and last name
- Their location and address history
- Additional phone numbers associated with the same person
- Their email address(es)
- Their social media and dating profiles
- Whether they own or rent at their current address
- Estimates of the value of the home, if they’re the owner
- Prior addresses for the same person
- A “Phone Reputation Score,” estimating the likelihood that the number is being used for spam calls or outright scams
The information in the search results should let you make an educated guess about why they’re calling you. A quick look at their social media should tell you whether — and how — they legitimately have a connection to you. Near the bottom of the page, you’ll also have the option of reporting the number if you’ve been getting nuisance calls.
How to Find the Address of a Phone Number When it’s Outdated
Finding the address of a number’s current owner, then, is pretty easy. But what if it’s the only number you have for an old friend, or a family member you’ve lost contact with, and it turns out that they’re no longer the owner of that number?
In that case, you’ll need to do a bit more digging.
- Scroll down past the information about the current owner, because relatively few numbers will only show one match. Below the current owner’s info, you’ll usually see several other names associated with that phone number. These may be other members of the same household, but often they’re previous owners of the same number.
- Look for the name of your lost contact in that list. You may need to check for variations, especially if you’ve never seen the person’s name written down (Catherine, Katherine, Kathryn, Cathy, Kathy, etc). Surnames can also change after a marriage or divorce, and people sometimes have their names legally changed for other reasons. It’s a complication.
- Click methodically through each prior owner of the phone number, if necessary, looking for details (a given town or part of town, their social media, the name of a familiar relative) that could tell you you’ve found the right person.
Once you’re (reasonably) confident you’ve found the right person, Spokeo’s search results will arm you with some combination of their current phone number(s) and address, any associated email addresses, and their social media profiles. You’ll have plenty of ways to reach out and reestablish contact, and you can choose whichever is most appropriate for your situation.
Why Search With Spokeo?
Knowing how to find someone with a phone number is a useful skill, quite apart from reconnecting with that old flame or long-lost friend. Some other obvious reasons for Spokeo searches include:
- Identifying a number that is constantly calling you.
- Helping a loved one identify a caller who’s harassing them.
- Identifying telemarketers and other spam callers.
There are less obvious reasons as well. Taking a moment to look up the people you interact with online, to see if they’re legitimately who they say they are, is a really useful way to avoid being catfished or lured into a potentially costly (and emotionally damaging) romance scam. It’s harder if the mystery number is spoofed, or if it’s a Google Voice number, but even then you can still usually learn useful information.
It’s even a good idea to search your own name and number periodically, as a way to detect the early signs of identity theft. If there are accounts or emails associated with your number that you didn’t open, that’s a big red flag. It’s also your cue to place a credit freeze, pull a credit report, and set about verifying and recovering from the identity theft (and don’t forget about reporting it to the FTC’s IdentityTheft.gov website).
Ultimately, your reasons for learning how to find someone with a phone number, or how to find an address with a phone number, are up to you. Helping you do it quickly and easily is where Spokeo comes in.