Reverse Cellular Phone Lookup

© Melinda Nagy|Dreamstime

When you don’t want someone to know you’re checking up on them, you use a reverse cellular phone lookup to get their personal information without them knowing. Otherwise, you’d just pick up the phone and call them, right?

So, you’re sitting there with a phone number and a whole lot of questions. Who is the person who is calling my spouse from this number? Why is my son talking to a person at this phone number late at night? Is this new girlfriend all I think she is or is she secretly married?

Or, better yet, maybe you got a girl’s number when you were out with the guys and she was really cute but you can’t remember her name (girls HATE that, by the way). How can you come up with her name before you make that call to ask her out on a date?

When all you have is the phone number and, on top of that, you find out it is a cellular phone number, you can’t simply go online and lookup the person’s name. Laws don’t allow wireless carriers to publish cell phone owner names and address without them having to first get everyone’s permission – and that’s not likely to happen.

You can, however, do a reverse cellular phone lookup and get the name plus an address and, often, lots of other information about a person.

It’s actually a bit intimidating how much information you can find out about someone online with just their cellular number. Especially when you consider those numbers aren’t published publicly.

How do they do this? And is a reverse cellular phone lookup legal?

• These reverse directories gather information through a number of methods, including lists of information they buy from others, social networking sites that allow users to opt-in with their cellular phone information, and by going through millions upon millions of public records files to get the information they can tie to every person and cell phone.

• Yes, a reverse cellular phone lookup is completely legal – in a very interesting sort of way. Wireless companies would have to get a customer’s permission before they could publish the information anywhere. Reverse directories are not subject to the same laws because they are not a wireless carrier so it legal for them to sell this information.

Once the online reverse directory has gathered all of those pieces of information, they put it together like a giant, jigsaw puzzle.

Here’s John Doe at cellular number 555-555-5555 and address of 100 Main Street in Main City, Maine. Here’s another John Doe at the same address with information from a public record showing his wife’s name so let’s add the wife’s name to John Doe’s puzzle…..on and on electronically through all of those pieces of information. That way, when you enter a cellular number in the reverse directory, all of the pieces tied to that phone number are assembled for you on one, efficient phone lookup report.