There are many reasons as to why you would need to trace a phone call or a phone number. Finding out who made that prank phone call is first in the list. You can also find out the present address of an old friend even if he does not use the same phone number. Checking out who has been calling your spouse or partner and vice versa is another. And of course you would like to know who left that invitation to the weekend party on your phone but forgot to give his name. Another use of tracing a phone call is to find the physical location of the phone.
There are many ways of tracing a phone number. One way is to approach the authorities or the phone company. This is time consuming and you need to have a serious enough reason to get a trace on the number. They may give you the name and address as per their records. You can also hire the services of a professional investigator which will be an expensive venture. Not all can afford that.
Today lots of people are turning to internet websites to trace phone numbers. Many websites provide reverse phone lookup services. These services not only provide the name and last known address of the phone owner but also background information like age, police and court records, employment details and so on. This is so because they have access to many public records. The data collected is updated frequently. Results are provided within hours if not instantly.
These websites may be free or you may have to subscribe to it. Free websites may not give you the required information if the number is unlisted or if it is a cell phone number. Checking more than one free site may not give any results either because the database is generally shared by them or it is usually one checked all!
Now if you want access to a paid site you may either subscribe to it or pay for every search done. These paid sites are more accurate and have larger databases. They work well for tracing cell phone numbers too. They provide assistance and access to a larger and accurate database. Most of these sites need to be paid only if you get results.
The downside of such facilities is that there is an invasion into your privacy. Your life is an open book to any one who wants to know. But the flip side of the coin is that you can use these websites to have your details removed from their database!
Mar 12