Reverse Phone Search
In the good old days, finding someone’s phone number was as easy as flipping open the phone book. However, you needed a special reverse lookup phone book to find someone’s name by their phone number. Since phone books are now pretty much extinct and everything is online, finding someone by their name or phone number is pretty straightforward and, in many cases, free!
Phone directories are organized by people’s names and then show an associated phone number. With a reverse phone lookup, the database is sorted by phone numbers instead, and they link to a person’s name. There are various ways to perform a reverse phone lookup online, and many websites that offer this service free or paid.
There are many reasons why you might want to find someone’s name by looking up their phone number. Perhaps you have been getting a lot of missed calls from a stranger and think you might have a stalker. Or maybe your significant other is getting calls late at night from an unknown caller. You might just be getting a lot of scam calls and want to report it to the FTC. Regardless of why you need it, a reverse phone lookup should help.
Many of the services that offer a reverse phone lookup provide much more than just the person’s name. In some cases, you can see the phone carrier service, photographs, social media profiles, whether it’s a landline or cell phone and sometimes even the caller’s location. Some services offer public records inclusion meaning you can see an entire background check on the caller just from their phone number! It could include warrants, arrests, convictions, incarcerations, divorces, marriages, bankruptcies, court cases, and more.
If you have someone’s name but are searching for their phone number, that’s a pretty easy find. You can use websites like the white pages (which is essentially the phone book online) or another dedicated search engine that links people and their phone numbers. You can also try using Google, Bing, or another free search engine to see what comes up. Sometimes you may get lucky and find the person’s phone number (especially if they have linked it with social media accounts or other public records).
Another free technique to find someone’s phone number is to search using their username. Most people use the same usernames on many different websites. In terms of security, this isn’t good, but it’s good for you in terms of privacy. You can find them much easier by using their email address or username. For example, you can type in different web addresses with their username and see what comes up. Try these, substituting “username” with the person’s username:
You can also use Google Social Search to search for a username across many different social media websites at one time. Try entering the person’s username or email address into Google, DuckDuckGo, or Bing, and see what comes up.
When you search by username, be careful to enter it correctly. Some usernames have underscores or hyphens, and each social media platform displays them differently. You might need to try a few combinations before you get it just right. Remember that someone with the same username may exist on different sites, so verify you have the right person before contacting them—double-check by reviewing their email address and seeing if it matches up.
You might also try a reverse image search if you have a picture of the person.
The first place you can start when learning how to find someone’s cell phone number by name for free is Google. Simply enter the person’s cell phone number into a Google search box and see what comes up. If they have linked their cell phone to their Facebook account and it’s open to the public, you will see it come up. Other public records may also be linked to their phone number, and therefore, you may see those as well. Chances are, you will see who the phone number belongs to, or you might be directed to use a people search tool and pay a fee to unlock the identity of the phone number.
There are dozens of people search tools on the internet. Most you can enter a person’s name, location, email address, phone number, and even username to find a plethora of information about them. Most will show you a basic overview of the person like their name and possibly their age. Then you will have the option of paying for the full report, which may include social media profiles, criminal records, court records, marriages and divorces, assets, addresses, professional licenses, bankruptcies, relatives, and more. By searching for someone using a public records database tool, you will get a complete deep dive into their life and all the information you could ever want.
Facebook is still an excellent way to locate someone’s name by phone number. Most people have linked their cell phone with their Facebook account. Therefore, if you log into Facebook and enter their phone number in the search field, chances are very good that you will get a hit and see the person’s name.
If you know the person’s phone number, you may enter it into a search engine and come up with a business. Check the corporate website and look at the staff area. Perhaps they work there and have linked their cell phone with the business. Other places to check are LinkedIn, online phone directories, and even genealogy websites that store a lot of personal information from vital records.
You can perform a manual background check by contacting various public records agencies and reviewing those records to find a match between a phone number and a name. Some of the state agencies have online lookups making this job a lot easier. Many of the people search databases get their information from public records, so it might be easier just to use one of them as they have already done the hard job for you.