The Many Ways To Trace A Phone Number For Free

There are plenty of situations when you might want to track down the owner of a particular phone number. It could be that some local teenager has just discovered the movie "Scream" and is calling you every Saturday morning to whisper "Do you like scary movies?"

Or it could be that a telemarketer, who won't tell you who he's working for, is calling you every Saturday afternoon to ask "Do you like scary movies? Just $14.99, plus shipping!"

But regardless of who you're being pestered by, there will definitely be countless times when you would give just about anything to know who's on the other end of that line.

The sad truth, though, is that the world of phone number tracing, particularly for cell phones, is one of false promises and broken dreams. Actually tracking down the person behind the number can be a confusing and grueling process.

But it doesn't have to be, if you know the options available to you.

The Old-Fashioned Ways

A good, old-fashioned Caller ID system can solve many of your tracing problems. But unfortunately, suspicious callers these days are much more likely to have their numbers blocked from being shown on the Caller ID, making it essentially worthless.

There is still one Caller ID trick you can use on them: Anonymous Call Rejection. If you set up this feature on your phone, it will no longer take blocked calls, forcing the offender to unblock if they want the call to go through, and letting you catch their number on your Caller ID!

Once you have the number, one "low-tech" solution is to plug it into an area code/prefix look-up engine. The digits of the area code, along with the first three numbers that come after it, will tell you the particular area that the call is coming from (free websites such as www.thedirectory.org/pref can help you do this). Though the areas are pretty large, with some luck and a bit of cleverness, that info might be enough to help you figure out who the caller is.

The High-Tech Ways

If that does not work, your next step should be a WhitePages.com or similar type of basic reverse phone lookup. If the number is listed, you will likely be able to track it down.
But what if it is not?

For the more web-savvy among us, some inspired web searching can be enough to trace a hard-to-find number. The most simple option, of course, is to just Google it; you may be surprised by the results. There are also some user-generated sites for documenting caller complaints (e.g. callercomplaints.com), and if your mystery caller is harassing others, these web forums may give you some useful leads.

Similarly, searching your online social networks, such as Facebook, could yield a result, if the caller happens to be a member of your community.

The Suspicious Ways

If none of these methods is working, you may be getting desperate, and will be tempted to try one of the many "free" reverse cell phone lookup services that you can find online. Almost every one of these firms, which claims to give you your answer for free, will try to con you into paying them, for a service that is likely to be shoddy anyway! And while there are some paid services which do an excellent job of reverse phone lookup (e.g. reversephonedetective.com), there is an even quicker (and more cost effective) way to solve your problem.

The Quickest Way

With FreeCellPhoneTracer.com, you can get all of the power of the best reverse lookup sites, without having to pay a cent. There is no faster, cheaper strategy for tracing a phone number than by using this web tool's sophisticated technology.

To begin a search, just enter the number you need to trace, select a free trial from one of the site's partners, and you will have your answer in seconds.