How to Trace a Person's Name by a Phone Number

By Eric Hammer

Who is on the line? Find out with just a phone number.
i phone. image by Alexander Lukyanov from Fotolia.com

Finding a name for a person based on a phone number used to be the province of the police and private detectives. Doing so required specialized connections to the telephone company, where the records of such things were stored. However, today with certain limitations anyone can find a name based on a phone number.

White Pages Free Reverse Number Lookup

For generations until phone deregulation in the early 1980s, the White Pages was where you went to find the phone number of someone in your area. If the number was unlisted, you were out of luck. Never mind trying to find the name by the phone number. Today, the WhitePages.com website offers you a basic reverse number lookup. It typically works only for land lines, though.

Super Pages Reverse Number Lookup

Super Pages puts out one of the most popular white and yellow pages in the United States today. It also offers through its website a people-search feature that can find information about a phone number and whom it belongs to. Similarly to the standard White Pages lookup feature, it will not find cell phone or other unusual type of number.

Intelius Reverse Number Lookup

Unlike the other two services discussed here, the Intellius service is fee-based. It attempts to comb additional records to find information about a phone number and locate information for cell phone numbers, Skype phone numbers and voice mail numbers. Of course, none of this will work if the phone number is unregistered. (For example, if the phone number is registered to a prepaid cellular phone number and there is no record of who owns the number. For situations like this, see the tips section.)

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