Who is This Number Registered To?  How to Find Out Quickly

One of the oddities of modern life is that, while most of us prefer texting or messenger apps for talking to each other, our phones still keep ringing with old-school calls.  There are lots of legitimate reasons for calling (sometimes it’s just easier than thumb-typing a complicated message) but a lot of calls come from scammers and spammers as well. 

Caller ID will at least show you a number for most (but not all) incoming calls, so you have that much to work with.  “Who is this number registered to?” is a question you can usually answer with a bit of digging.  Here’s how to go about it. 

Who is This Number Registered To?  Let’s Find Out

There are several ways to track down an unknown caller’s phone number and find out who’s behind it.  Some are free and some aren’t, but most are relatively quick.  Let’s take a look at the most common options. 

Who's Calling Me?

Search any phone number to learn more about the owner!

Start With a Quick Online Search

The obvious starting point is to type your mystery number into Google, or any alternative search engine you prefer.  Search engines won’t usually connect an individual person’s name and number, for privacy reasons, but — because businesses want you to call — those will usually show up.  Certain other high-profile individuals may show up as well, including activists, professionals (doctors, lawyers, etc.), and political figures. 

An online search also helps you rule out a number of calls, especially if you add a word like “scam” to your search.  If your search results usually connect that number to a complaint or a scam report, you can be pretty certain that it’s not anybody you want to talk to (no matter how persuasive the message they’ve left on your voicemail). 

A number of free and paid sites collect reports of spam calls and fraudsters, and they’ll often turn up in your search.  You may also note that a lot of those scam reports show up on specific forums like Quora and Reddit, so if you have a membership at either site you can do a further search there.  It may show additional details like the specific type of scam to expect from a given number, which can give you the confidence to ignore it. 

Check the Main Social Media Sites

Aside from a search of the Web as a whole, it’s worth a moment of your time to try searching on social media.  LinkedIn is a good starting point, because unlike most other platforms people on LinkedIn are actively looking to make contacts (and therefore, are more likely to supply a phone number). 

You can also try searching sites like Facebook and Instagram for the mystery phone number.  Most people won’t deliberately link their name and phone number on these sites, but, again, professionals, businesses, and those who want to be contacted will.  There will always be a few people who also link their phone numbers and make the public purely by accident or inattention.  You never know until you try. 

Call the Number Back

This one’s not everybody’s cup of tea, but it’s an option.  If your caller is a business they’ll often answer the phone with the company name (“You have reached Acme Gadgets.  Please listen carefully, as our menu has changed…”) and you’ll have the option of either hanging up or speaking to someone. 

If the caller is a private individual, you can ask who they are and why they’re calling you.  Sometimes the situation will be perfectly legitimate, and nothing bad will happen.  Unfortunately, often the caller is someone you don’t want to talk to, or an outright scammer, which is why this isn’t a popular way to find out who called. 

Use Spokeo’s Reverse Phone Lookup

If you aren’t getting the information you need from these first few efforts, it might be time to turn to the professionals.  Whether you currently have a subscription or not, you can type the phone number into Spokeo’s Reverse Phone Lookup and get some meaningful information. 

If you’re a non-member the free search results are fairly limited, but you’ll at least see the location where the phone is registered, the name of the carrier (so you’ll know where to complain if it’s a scammer), and a small map so you can see visually where your caller is located. 

If you’re a member — or use the purchase option to unlock the rest of the search results — you’ll get access to a wealth of additional information that may be available.  First and foremost, that means the name the phone is registered to.  Which is great, the very thing you’re looking for, but the name alone might not tell you much especially if it’s a common or unfamiliar one. 

To help fill in the picture, a Spokeo phone number search can provide a ton of extra information, including (but not limited to) : 

  • The caller’s age and gender (if available) when it’s a person
  • Current and former physical addresses
  • Co-residents, family, and relatives
  • Additional phone numbers associated with that person or business
  • Emails and social media accounts associated with that phone number
  • Whether they own or rent
  • Their estimated income
  • Their criminal record, if any (depending on your subscription level, there may be an extra charge for that one)

From that you can almost certainly work out who the caller is, and whether they have any connection to you at all.  If necessary you can take the information from that original search and search again using the physical address or email address, until you have as much information as you need. 

For unknown numbers, a key feature of the search results is Spokeo’s Phone Reputation Score, which assesses the likelihood that a number is being used for scamming or spamming people.  Even if the number’s Reputation Score shows that it’s likely legitimate, you’ll see whether it’s seen a rash of searches and complaints recently.  That can be a sign that scammers are actively “spoofing” that number and using it for their calls. 

Use the Spokeo App to See Who’s Calling in Real Time

All of those techniques have one failing in common: they take time.  If you install the Spokeo app on your phone instead, and use it to log in to your Spokeo account, you’ll be able to see that same depth of information about your incoming caller right in the app, along with the benefit of caller ID to identify each inbound caller.  That means you can make an informed decision right away whether to answer, ignore, or outright block the call. 

The Spokeo app is only available for Android phones at the time of writing (sorry, iPhone fans!) but there are plenty of other call-blocking apps out there with varying suites of features.  None of the others have access to Spokeo’s database, but some provide similar real-time information about incoming calls.  Many are free or offer a free trial, so it won’t cost you anything to try a few and see which one works for you. 

Empowerment at Your Fingertips

Unknown phone calls can be mildly annoying, profoundly irritating, or downright unsettling depending on how often you get them, and what kind of messages they’re leaving on your voicemail.  Knowing that you can track down the number if you need to, and (usually) find out who’s behind it, is a reassuring skill to have in your arsenal. 

Giving you the power to live confidently in our online, connected society is a big part of Spokeo’s mandate.  It has taken us the best part of two decades of work, and a significant investment in data sources and usability, to bring our service to this level of speed, ease, and comprehensiveness. 

But you know what? It’s been absolutely worth it.

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