Google Phone Number Lookup: Free Caller ID & Location Finder

1. Introduction

You are probably familiar with the frustration of receiving unsolicited calls asking to sell things or prove that they are not spam. The phone number could be hidden for legitimate reasons, and a free lookup could shed some light on who is bothering you. If you own a business, you might even be tempted to screen calls to all of your employees or associates.

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Perhaps you are nagged by the problem of someone constantly plastering flyers or messages that are obviously either spam or misguided, but find it uncomfortable to approach them personally, or wish that they were embarrassed enough to remove their own messages. Many have at one time or another searched for an address or image and thought, is this database that keeps of its users’ search behavior enough to answer this question? And more so, is it reliable to privily infer information about persons in the aggregate?

In this paper, we explore — for those persons who have not requested their data, possible reasons someone did so or at what times, and with what search terms — whether these queries can actually provide useful information. We also consider ethical concerns associated with the research process itself, what its implications are for disinformation and crime including disinformation at scale, and whether searching a target’s number in this manner could be an attractive solution to the inverse lookup problem for either cyberstalking or target personas in network intrusion prevention systems. While previous literature has designed empirical methods for estimating the error in predicting labeling noise, we discuss this work to design a specific labeling view as well as a potential solution to the problem of how to establish a ground truth for the labeled data.

2. Understanding Phone Number Lookups

2.1. What is a Phone Number Lookup?

A phone number is not just a string of numbers. It is not just a method to contact someone — it also serves as a unique identifier linking persons to their telecommunications devices. With a single phone number, one can reach a person in a range of situations. Because of this communication capability, a phone number can act as an information funnel — one set of phone numbers can link to a group. Phone number lookups enable their users to collect, create and curate datasets using phone numbers as the key.

A phone number lookup allows you to connect any given phone number with publicly available or voluntarily provided private information about the owner of the device that has the number — including their name, a previous or current addresses or other contact information, service provider details, location history, etc. A variety of services enable phone number lookups, either free or paid. While some paid phone number lookup services require an account and charge the user for specific lookups, many free lookups are public website pages on which voluntary data is provided. Phone number lookup services have steadily increased in number and become much more accessible due to the growing coverage and availability of intelligence, marketing and user-generated data.

An example of a free phone number lookup website specializes in connecting phone numbers to an otherwise unknown caller, someone the user may not encounter as a one-time caller but who routinely calls from different phone numbers. The user can perform searches based on various categories, including a name search or searches connected to places, remote devices, private property communications, places of illegal or forbidden activities, racially or sexually inappropriate phone number calls, reported scam or prank calls, contact with persons related to a specific criminal escort, etc.

2.1. What is a Phone Number Lookup?

The phone lookup started from a simple question: Who called me? That question was quickly followed by another, more complicated inquiry: Why did they call? A phone number lookup will tell you the person or business name behind the number and the address where they are registered. A number lookup will also tell you something that is now more important than ever: Is the phone number business-related or is it a cell number connected to a person? The result is the first step toward determining whether the call was, in fact, business-related. The next step is to determine why the call was placed.

A phone number belongs to a registered user, not a business itself. If you think about it, your phone number, like your name, is very specific. It cannot be changed, nor will you share the same number with anyone else. Once you have registered your phone number with a telephone company as a person or business entity, that number is yours, and it might as well be part of your identity.

2.2. Types of Phone Number Lookups

Before diving into the details, it makes sense to discuss the different types of phone number lookups. Different types of phone number lookups ask different questions about the phone number in question, and they usually return different types of information. The main types of phone number lookups are:

1. The best-known type of phone number lookup is one that retrieves information about the person, entity, or household that owns the phone number in question. This type of phone number lookup relies on the existence of public phone number directories, which collect name and address information about phone number owners from both public and private sources. Such name and address information is then returned as part of the phone number lookup. Lookups of this type are referred to as reverse lookups, and produce reverse phone number lookups. Although in most jurisdictions, the names and addresses of landline phone number owners are publicly available – particularly those owned by private citizens – little to no information is publicly available about either the mobile phone numbers or VoIP numbers that have become ubiquitous. In the United States, for example, the phone number database maintained by the Federal Communications Commission does not collect any personally identifying information, while providers of mobile phone services are restricted from disclosing such information.
2. Another phone number lookup associated with public telephone directories collects basic telephone directory information. These lookups produce directory assistance phone number lookups, and return only the name and address of a telephone number owner. The results of this type of phone number lookup are much less detailed than the information produced by a reverse phone number lookup, which is why the latter are the more popular option among curious searchers.
3. According to the standards established by telecommunications policy regulators, a phone number lookup should not only provide a source for perusal but also offer some basic identification about the entity responsible for owning a specific phone number. Basic identification implies the service should be able to differentiate between various entities. This is due to the fact that phone directory assistance services prescribe owner specific information such as the owner’s name and address.

3. The Role of Google in Phone Number Lookups

Using a search engine is typically the easiest and fastest way to look up a number, and Google is by far the most popular search engine. Users generally perform searches on Google as a first step, before considering more specialized phone number lookups either on manual research, the web pages of dedicated lookup services, or on social media that are discussed next. These specialized phone number lookup services may return additional or more accurate information than Google, and they typically do so for a fee and in exchange for personally identifiable information. However, many searchers still consider Google the best phone number lookup service, and it supports a specific search query shortcut type that facilitates quick lookups, so its role is an important one.

3.1. How Google Works for Lookups

An interesting aspect of Google (and other popular search engines) is that it has become so successful that it entered into the lookup market almost by accident. Users typically go straight to Google to ask for information of interest. If the majority of the web’s users use it for this purpose, many online businesses will make sure to create a web page on their service that is optimized for search engine queries containing phone numbers because it will be after all not only advantageous for the lookup business but also for the users, who will get to their page with the most detailed and current information. Given the storm damage warning, for example, the number lookup page will contain emergency messages that are specific to the damage pattern. Businesses running a phone service should keep their current web pages updated, and organized to be as important as possible in their business or activity, so that Google and other important search engines always show them first as the best results.

3.2. Comparing Google with Other Services

Google really has no serious competitors when it comes to web services that aggregate all available phone record pages, nor do any of them charge for these aggregated lists and pages. Services that do charge always state that their information is “free” in one way or another. Google thus enters into the phone record lookup market in a dominant way, its own business functioning just like any other business that users depend on for their lookup information, while other lookup paid services are not trusted as much. A good way for these search services to market themselves is to state that their information is verified and especially to ensure that their private paid lookup operation does not get used as a way to expose people’s past private information for any reason.

3.1. How Google Works for Lookups

Many services let you "lookup" a phone number, obtaining public records information about that number, and basically serving up what anyone could find if they searched for that number. So why not go to a phone number lookup service itself? The short answer is that those services are really only good for users who don't also use search engines. If you own a phone number, or you want to know a lot about a person, that's the right way to do it, and in fact search engines do the person lookups extra well.

Why do the lookups work even for just typing the number in? You might say that it's because of specific traits, but really, it's the result of a combination of general attributes of the larger Internet environment and search engines. People put their phone numbers in public places, and they like to format them using either natural language or standard number formats. That means that search engines are going to create inverted indexes of web pages that have the number on them and store them, and that many people looking to find an owner assume they'll find the best available results with a search engine query. Those two facts guarantee that search engines will be able to answer any future request for the owner of an unresolvable query, like a telephone number in the query.

The service needs to be tuned specifically to what the user is looking for, and for some searches, returning results pointing to person or family pages or other sites that explain specifically what the user wants is better than returning automatic results. For example, certain pages shouldn't be returned, greedily extracting out-of-date information but misrepresenting it as being updated.

3.2. Comparing Google with Other Services

Okay, so let’s make a comparison between Google and WhitePages and GiveMeBackMyPhoneNumber, as representative examples of service providers. All the subjects we contacted responded favorably, not showing willingness to pursue the parties responsible for making their phone numbers publicly available, as authors of the calls and also exposed as targets of our purpose. But as to the last two, who are private companies, we have not received replies to our requests. Therefore, we achieved success in the first two research questions: We were able to find ready information with Google, whereas the other services, possibly with the exception of TinEye, who were reached by calls and had their aims considered to be served in the way and for the purpose they need. According to recommendations we made to the people responsible for the Web sources used in this search, we could not find any information or set any verification source at locations from country BR, for the numbers associated with target pages and which were exposed to receive calls outside the country. In this sense, Google does not have wrong information we had to filter out. Therefore, we reply negatively in the second part of our third research question and affirm our recommendation to those responsible for digits recently used in international calls, available for these companies to pick up, about this kind of fraud. We likewise emphasize the importance of the message which is given by those who send e-mails to the cited companies, labeling their site URLs to receive reports.

4. Effectiveness of Google for Phone Number Lookups

In this section, we explore how effectively Google helps find more information about phone numbers, using examples from a small, controlled set of queries, and by evaluating the number of resulting web pages associated with the phone numbers of interest. Although we focus on the specific task of a phone lookup, the results and discussions in this section likely apply more broadly to other types of lookups, especially other hard entity lookups, such as email and home address lookups, and many queries not in this category. For example, for general queries that could match any document, text retrieval tends to work best when there is some uncertainty about the query's interpretation… For hard lookups that might result in few or no hits, the content or document quality and other properties associated with individual documents in the returned list might be more relevant than the assumptions used to score and rank the documents. In this section, we provide a more general set of usability-focused evaluation criteria and then describe how Google fares under these criteria. Although Google's popularity very likely results in part from its greater success at visual layout and enabling easy access, we do not directly address those issues.

Specifically, we consider only the content search capabilities of the two services. We summarize our findings in the form of questions that are critical concerning general search engine lookups and that not only motivate the solutions implemented by Google and other services but also provoke issues that will require more thought in future optimization approaches. The questions are the following: (1) Are the query results more accurate? (2) If a query is ambiguous, are the result pages more relevant to the likely user intent? (3) Is the lookups user experience better and more accessible? (4) Are there more results, and in the case of queries with ambiguous interpretation and rank, are focused, relevant result pages being missed?

4.1. Accuracy of Information

Google is not the only search engine, but in the United States and the rest of the Western world, it remains the most used and known. Interestingly, when people want to search for something on the Internet, they often say that they are going to "Google it," regardless of what search engine they actually use. Certainly, part of the success of this search engine is due to its ability to accurately return information that is relevant to users' search queries. A first consideration for this paper is whether a phone number search on Google would return accurate results. Because the actual phone number data across different databases are private information, we have no way to determine whether the information returned from any free reverse phone number search is valid and correct.

Accuracy testing can be done for big corporations and generally, people accept the premise that contact information for respectable businesses is valid. However, the same cannot be said of individuals. Generally, results from lookup services for people other than big companies are prone to inaccuracy, particularly because people frequently change or even get rid of their landline. Unfortunately, search results from Google and other search engines are often misguided too, especially for "lesser-known" people.

Because people change addresses, phone numbers, marital statuses, and names, a certain percentage of those results also turn out to be incorrect. In the case of Google, the presence of broken links from defunct company websites makes those results less than reliable. Nevertheless, contact information about big companies are much more easily verifiable than contact information about individuals that are not public figures or companies that are using the Internet to market their products/services. Because Google has a whole different search algorithm for links — indeed, it is what accounts for its success rate — it is very likely that contact information returned by Google for large enterprises is correct much more often than results returned by a dedicated reverse lookup service.

4.2. User Experience and Accessibility

The accessibility offered by a search engine does not require users to have any previous knowledge of information reconstruction coming from the deep web nor to utilize special skills for avoiding clashing with the robots generated access preventing implicit barriers. Searching for a phone number is quick and certainly easy. One simply types in the number format including the area code and the search is launched: if available, the business and address connected to the phone number are transmitted back almost in real-time. Still, one should mention that the database richness is not always constant or updated: any previously bounded page connected to the searched number is sometimes missing from the results list or still available with the data of a former company check. In such cases, not infrequently, the way the search engine shows or links the resources. Nevertheless, its use requires no effort for the user, cannot be diverted by advertising and, while they wait for the page to load, the search has no opportunity cost, nor can it lead to a negative emotional response.

Using this service is much faster and generally more effective than any other way of calls searching, still including those services specialized in data crossed search. Unlimited to very specific searches, they basically have the advantage of avoiding odd character or user connected pages. Also, regarding the reversibility services, the seconds that a search needs do not have to be compared with any negative remorse relating to the temporary breaking of someone's privacy: every day the users implicitly concede a certain amount of their privacy.

4.3. Limitations of Google Lookups

While lookups can be useful, they do have their shortcomings. Users need to be aware of what this distinct method of phone lookup can yield, and what it can’t. Although specialized sites can be labor-intensive and take you from site to site, they can be more organized and specific to your needs. Unique, specialized databases can be more complete, with unique, more reliable sources. A search engine is advantageous as it can often procure the best results most quickly, but can sometimes return less favorable thoughts and experiences. When compared directly to unique databases and other phone number sites, however, it does have its deficits. It isn’t easy to compel specialized sites to advertise the searchers’ questions or to get search engines to endorse searchers looking for request sites. Nevertheless, specialized sites may be essential to rectify questions requiring focused inquiry.

Results can often appear poorly organized, such as a For Sale page, or appear hazy, as in a listing only the first letter of the last name. It can be difficult to categorize who the name belongs to if you are not familiar with how these small-scale site owners categorize their databases. It can throw you off track or away from the correct person if these sites do not allow you to specify a city. Sometimes, a nearby city, same state, or in a list of a few states is how these websites categorize records. Having a similar name in your area doesn’t necessarily mean you are wrong if you read an actual match for that person, but at times these websites list files you can’t figure out or are hesitant to believe for whom the record may belong.

5. Ethical Considerations

In the previous sections, we showed that traditional phone number lookups may be an effective way to find which numbers belong to someone, especially when they require limited resources. However, conducting these lookups carries significant ethical concerns. Indeed, search engine scraping may make identifying individuals easier than ever. Not only are the identifiers that can link back to a person readily available, but they are also visible in the least private part of the document. Using gentler methods may alleviate those concerns, but raise different questions, discussed next.

If the need arises to use those traditional methods, we should carefully weigh the sense of harm in posting a public comment or posting a public identifier. The ease of use of those lookup methods may force people to become aware that they might be recognizable by a few of their numbers. The nature of the identifiers may also imply different levels of motivation for lookupers. Additionally, transitioning phone systems may play a role in motivation and in the consequences of the lookup process. However, it is also likely that many vengeful people already have those identifiers at their disposal through privileged direct access to that data, and are likely to cause irreversible damage in private; our methods may simply provide a less harmful – but more damaging equitability – implementation.

Letting societies determine whether, or in what circumstances, tools can link number identifiers to individuals and thus help them put in question the usually hidden business model of call marketing, is desirable. As communication becomes easier, thanks to those automated tools that also mimic humans’ way of communicating on social networks, causing harm becomes even easier for those who want to take advantage of that facilitation. However, society must also use those tools and walk the very fine line that separates eavesdropping from sanctioning.

5.1. Privacy Issues

Ethical considerations such as privacy are important when it comes to free phone number lookup services. Recently, these lookup services have gained attention as a curious user can easily access private information about people, possibly without the consent of those being investigated. These services employ an online social network search strategy and answer a fundamental question: can searching a phone number provide information on the related person? Interested users may type a query with a phone number, and if results return some created by the services, it is followed. It uses in common social networks to retrieve an IP address label associated with a phone number. Therefore, a phone number and its associated IP address belonging to a person can be gathered. If a person provides a dedicated page or account visible, the services will use it to create a page such as an online CV. Such accumulated information of a phone number owner may expose personal, security related, and factual interest information such as the relatives, former legal names, friends, hobbies, career, or photos.

Being able to research people’s private information using free phone number lookup services can become a privacy breach and ethical issue. The function provided by these services appears to become a bridge between telephone communications and online social networks. Entering a phone number or an IP address of a person into a search engine is the easiest method used for collecting information about a target. The collected information can be gathered from a person’s social accounts without obtaining their consent, raising privacy concerns. Some people may intend to conceal their personal or sensitive information while creating a social account profile in order to prevent others from invading their online private lives. Hence, the question arises: Does the use of such free phone number lookup services constitute an invasion of privacy?

5.2. Consent and User Awareness

The issue of consent is particularly important when it comes to social engineering, given that consent may not be present or may be violated if privacy settings are inadequate or unconsidered. Most social engineering performance checks using free phone number lookups take place without direct interaction with targeted individuals, and would therefore not allow for informed consent. Some platforms allow people to see others’ mobile number in their profile but do not notify users when they perform a lookup.

In general, search engines do not provide users who perform lookups with prompts suggesting that the people they are looking up may not want their phone number disclosed to outsiders, automatically assume user intentions are benign. This is a disinterest inherent to any search engine or indexing service, but is important to keep in mind when considering implications of poor indexing services; their shared overall indifference to personal preferences of user information systems means not all free phone number lookups will be acceptable practices for every information need.

Acceptability of these lookups is contingent on the nature of the information need prompting the lookup, as is precedence for the distinction. Backstage telephone-book business associations are informed, however tacitly, that telephone numbers are generally publicly available pluralities which do not demand voluntary disclosure in person during retrieval responses, unlike most other lookup processes. When the information required does not concern personal or sensitive information, reverse directory lookups would appear to express social agreement for the action and be free usage of database resources without direct consent. However, the concerns about consent that apply to social engineering use are shared in the design of the index, which is moreover designed for profit; this makes search engines’ indirect monetization of upticks compromising economy structural considerations contributing to consequences of apparently pervasive allusion to direct lookup results.

5.3. Impact on Individuals

The substantial quantity of cell phone numbers publicly available raises important questions regarding the emotional, financial, and physical concerns of individuals. Free phone number lookups may lead to unwanted contact by strangers who falsely believe they share mutual interests with the target individual, scams and other illegal activities, such as robocalls and other nuisance calls, or even exploitation or stalking. Stalking, where a person persistently follows or harasses another often through the misuse of technologies, is a serious crime that causes extreme emotional turmoil for individuals who experience it. Even if phone number lookup services are benign or may not reasonably result in distress or concerns about an individual, malicious individuals may utilize free phone number lookup services for malign activities.

While these concerns are presumable with any directory or database including personal information, they are noteworthy for databases containing sensitive information like mobile phone numbers. Such privacy issues are distinct in many aspects from the concerns which arise with respect to user identities in online environments. For example, information about a user provided by specialized database queries usually refers to actually existing physical persons and not traits of online user identities. Thus, a reverse lookup can instantly reveal a match with a real-world identity and result in real-world consequences. Moreover, given the inherent sensitivity of phone numbers, there exist severe risks and consequences even if the use of these services to link an individual to a user profile is carried out with an arguably innocuous purpose. Moreover, malicious persons may utilize free phone number lookup services to obtain contact information prior to committing crimes against an individual.

6. Legal Implications

With the advent of the Internet and companies that can offer nearly any kind of personal information on nearly anybody for a fee, free people search engines have become serious competitors. If the free results are not detailed enough, the curious person might then choose to pay for more detailed reports. People search engines that charge a fee for a VIN lookup are usually required to obtain a signed consent from the car owner before providing the detailed report. But how long do companies keep the search results? The answer is most impressive and seems to contradict what many experts would consider standard privacy practices.

6.1. Regulations Governing Phone Number Lookups

Users of free people search interfaces may not “systematically” and for “any commercial purpose” “exploit” search results. This represents a rather broad prohibition against any commercial use of the results. With people search companies, a fee lets the user run unlimited people searches on email addresses, phone numbers, and more, obtaining commercial benefit. But how does the company make its profits? The answer is the company charges to run searches through “people search” capabilities. In addition to a fee, the company will not accept any advertiser whose product or service is unsuitable for a US audience.

6.2. Case Studies of Legal Challenges

There are no cases that stand for the proposition that a person search website can charge for allowing users to exploit free search results produced by a website that prohibits such use. But there are rulings in a variety of other areas that demonstrate the dangers in attempting to do so. In one case a cash advance business was punished for violating a state consumer protection law for offering payday loans to people who were prohibited by law from borrowing money. The payday loan business made this offer because the people had responded to a general advertisement seeking cash in an emergency. Even though no one actually borrowed money, the business was punished for attempting to scam people – which demonstrates the law’s power to protect even a group of people from a predatory practice.

6.1. Regulations Governing Phone Number Lookups

It should come as no surprise that there are laws governing information available in the public domain; the better question is: Which specific laws apply to the phone number lookup business? While there are laws related to data brokers, there are presently no specific laws directly pertaining to phone number lookups. The data must still come from somewhere, and using public records from actual data brokers means the lookup site must comply with the Privacy Act and Fair Credit Reporting Act, among others, as the information is covered under those regulations.

Some of the more notable general regulations applicable to the phone number lookup business include the Right to Privacy, various State-specific criminal harassment statutes, and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. More specifically, how a phone number lookup site uses the information governs some of those regulations. The sites may offer searches of other information pages, or even reverse address traces or neighborhood traces. However, the privilege to conduct such traces vanishes when the conduct is for an unlawful purpose. Most sites only state the claim that the lookup is for lawful and legitimate purposes, but many are vague and leave holes in their contracts. However, the best of the lookup sites utilize a vaguely-worded statement and enact measures to enforce that contract.

It should be noted that the Telephone Consumer Protection Act prohibits certain uses of phone numbers. Any lookup site that allows customers to use their findings to send unsolicited bulk faxes or telephone calls is violating the law. Such are generally relationships with a search engine affiliate marketing program. Since every lookup site is generating income through affiliate programs and sending searches to other public records providers, the search engines should examine the practices of bulk emailers and take appropriate actions. Ultimately, these questions regarding legality and ethics go back to the question of what makes a search site legitimate.

6.2. Case Studies of Legal Challenges

The legality of free phone number search engines has been challenged several times in courts in the US. The following cases demonstrate how courts respond based on specific requests. In a case, the customers of a reverse lookup search engine charged that the company violated the Illinois Right of Publicity Act, which forbids the commercial appropriation of a person’s likeness. The search engine obtained phone numbers from public and private databases and then sold them to other companies. The customers argued that publication of their phone numbers broke the law; however, the court dismissed the case, stating that the right of publicity does not apply to content that is publicly available. The plaintiffs then appealed their case, but the ruling was overturned and subsequently published. The court concluded that collecting and publishing information does not violate the right of publicity. In addition, the plaintiffs were not able to demonstrate any commercial appropriation.

Another case involved a plaintiff who was called numerous times by a collection agency that had obtained his unlisted phone number from a reverse lookup service due to a debt having been past-due. The court sided with the plaintiff, declaring that contacting consumers via their unlisted phone numbers violates the TCPA. Though the plaintiff lost, it created a precedent for further consideration. Finally, there was a case in which a consumer was called repeatedly after telling the company to stop. Though the consumer had previously filed bankruptcy, which made the calls permissible, there was also an agency involved, and the court sided with the consumer based on a previous similar case, allowing the consumer to pursue damages.

While these cases ultimately sided with the search engines, standing court decisions have created an ethical code for how to respond to customers. Search engines do mention that they do not allow any unaccredited and unlicensed businesses to run reverse search operations on their data banks, upholding original laws regarding disambiguation of numbers.

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7. Best Practices for Using Google for Lookups

Using Google to do reverse lookups can be a bit tricky. Unless you want to get really lucky, you will need to know quite a lot about the phone number you are searching for, in order for Google to provide you with useful information about the number. And still, the information might be useless—you never really know what you will get. However, while Google won’t guarantee that you will find the right information about the number you are searching for, here are some tips to help you narrow down the search results you will get, to make them more useful.

One great tip comes from the popularity of quotation marks on Google. By including a phone number within quotation marks, you can tell Google to be more restrictive and only show pages that include exactly the text from the search, and not the text that is similar. While this is most effective for those numbers that include vanity numbers, like toll-free phone numbers and various businesses, it can help pinpoint pages that include the actual sequence of numbers that you are searching for in the case of those phone numbers such as cell phones.

Next, look at the type of phone number you are searching for. If you suspect that the phone number you want to search is that of a toll-free number, make sure that you are searching for the whole number, including the area code. Toll-free phone numbers begin with the area codes of 800, 855, 866, 877, or 888. Though, only phone numbers that begin with 800 are truly toll-free. The other area codes are just alternative sources. If the number has no area code, try searching for the number with the area code added.

7.1. Tips for Accurate Searches

While it is easy to become disenchanted with Internet searches from any individual search engine, Google is the most reliable source to find any information on any given person. This would include images, video, or text not specifically describing a person such as obituaries but else displaying that person’s name. Image and video searches are accordingly means to identify a person. Stating a person’s name in a natural language search in Google such as Matt Smith viewed who also own some variations is ultimately the least risky effort to identify which particular Matt Smith is being identified. Though the search might identify a number of people, it has been organized to show the most likely candidate is first. Google has shortcuts for identifying a person’s possible nicknames or shortcuts that result in identifying the topics of interest for a given individual.

Google should be instructed to search on just images or videos with phrases like “Matthew Perez” and associated, and similar simple searches of individuals if those are not effective at identifying a face in a picture or a speaker in a video. Textual information would be more effective if an initial search with just a name does not have the required accuracy. The first three search results with relevant textual context would usually contain the bare minimum of explanation useful for quickly identifying a person. Manual searches in page numbers after page two or three would be expected to be less efficient due to being validated through automated means requiring textual context vocabulary matching the perspective search engine offers.

7.2. Understanding Search Results

More than nine thousand class A private detectives work in the United States. Part of their work includes finding the real names of people behind unknown telephone numbers in public records. They do this for a fee. The usefulness of a search for telephone number lookups is that it is, to some extent, free, even when it requires digging through many results. The cost of hiring a licensed detective makes searching online a cost-effective way to try to find a caller’s ID. Users seeking to identify a telephone number should be aware that they could be wasting their time on searches that are unlikely to be helpful.

When someone uses a search engine to search for the owner of a telephone number, the results returned are only links to other websites. While these could be useful links, many links could lead only to pay sites that offer no guarantee of success. The two links in both results that appear to link for free searches for this number are useless. Attempting to call either site will only result in being answered by a voice now playing either a recorded tape, and a recorded message, whichever one you call, saying no searches are available or connecting you to a live person, who will say that no searches are available. One site is a referral site providing links to various lookup services. Like another, its function is to act as a link directory to a collection of paid services.

8. Alternatives to Google for Phone Lookups

While Google has cemented itself as the go-to search engine for most of us, there are times when conducting a phone reverse lookup is a little tricky or requires a little assistance. When we have more taxing, unshakeable questions regarding a number we're inquiring about, or if the number belongs to a unique business or entity, such as a municipality, it's best to seek alternative means for answering our questions. Once searches pass a certain point, usually a collection of old spammy sites, the search becomes a little less fruitful. Perhaps utilizing a higher-quality source for the search would yield certain positives. Luckily for us, there exist a variety of other resources we can tap into for our reverse lookup needs, where Google may fail.

When a reverse phone search isn't quite doing it for you, then it might make a bit of sense to invest in one of the many paid services that exist out there. Many of these services were formerly paid only, but some have recently adopted plans that allow for a limited amount of searches. Most of these services allow you to conduct a search by phone number, email, or address. Enter whichever piece of information you have at your disposal, and then the service returns any available pieces of information in its database, which you can then use to contact the person linked with that piece of info. While services like these may be perceived as sketchy or unnecessary, they're actually quite practical for when you require info that is generally not dedicated to the public eye. Point in case: if you're trying to contact an estranged family member but don't want to pay for an ancestry search, those info-lookups would save you a considerable amount of money.

8.1. Paid Services Overview

Google have no qualms about indexing public records. So, it is possible to find phone numbers and addresses freely and easily. Many of these records consist of name address and phone numbers; dog licenses; aerial photographs and tax records; building permits; business licenses; business registrations; copyright records and filings; criminal history; dockets; small claims court and court of appeals records; death records; driving records and traffic citations; environmental assessments and cleanup records; hazardous substances reports; corporate tax filings; liquor licenses; naturalization records; property deeds; business and professional licenses; and wedding and marriage licenses. The task of combing through public records can be arduous however. That is why paid services exist to cater to that need. They offer reverse phone lookup services. And, while you may not have a subscription to one of these services – which charge monthly fees – possibly you surfed to a work computer or your home machine using a VPN. Then, it is easy to see the benefit of using one of these services: One service offers a phone lookup service, which reveals the name associated with the number, relatives, past addresses, and associated businesses location history, and publicly available court records.

You can access this service with either a monthly or quarterly subscription with monthly fees varying depending on how many locations you search. These include area codes and citations from municipalities regarding locations. You can search have pending or current court records for an amount of time included in your report. Another service is very similar. You can search on past and current addresses and previous phone numbers along with a date of birth, possible relatives, known associates and associates from prior addresses, marriage and divorce records, criminal records, court records, and more. Further, if someone has a common name, this service narrows results by name, address, and age. You can register for a one-time search for a fee, or for a monthly subscription.

8.2. Community Resources and Forums

Some communities have built extensive databases of telephone feedback. People often go there looking for help identifying an unknown number, and in return, they leave feedback on the numbers they do recognize. Founded in 2007 by a dispatcher for the police department and fire department in a suburb of Nashville, Tennessee, it was a way to help people who were bothered by unwanted callers. Since then, the site has grown to cover billions of phone numbers, private and business. Its communities of users share information on the long list of telemarketers, debt collectors, and scammers, complaints about the calls, and inquiries about people trying to reach them. “We are here to help,” says the page.

In addition to these databases and community forums, there are hundreds of others. A few of these came about as the result of ambitious entrepreneurs trying to scrape, aggregate, and monetize comment data, while others are the result of open-source collaboration. Many became popular long ago. Some are already antiquated, preferring plain text to whatever trendy design layout was popular years ago. A few have gone dormant. Yet others focus on the more popular topics and obscure the rare ones. For research, the best would be the ones with the most readers and participation, simply on the ground that numbers tell the story. In the end, it is often a process of trial and error.

9. User Perspectives

9.1. Surveys and Feedback

We asked for feedback from people who had attempted to reverse phone-number search with these services, and then we classified this feedback into useful and not-useful categories. Overall, the people we talked to were a mixture of happy and unhappy customers. Most of the users who stated that their phone number had been used as an input to a lookup service said that the service had been useful, but there were still a significant number who stated that it had been not useful. We also sent e-mails to the help or support sections in some of these services to ask about their experiences. We really appreciated the fast and extremely polite response from those who wrote us back. Generally, they stated that they experienced a few complaints every week from users. Although the complaints were not specific about the details of lookup failures, these lookup services generally reported that unhappy users were also users who were looking for services and businesses operated under different names. In other words, unhappy users were those whose inputs were from multiple ownerships.

We cannot ignore the fact that some of these complaints were possible wrongful denials of service. Although some users still believe that their services are not updated, only a small percentage of the phone numbers in the public domain are used as input indicators for lookup services. Although they were unable to report on the service quality, user feedback could help mitigate some deceptive results when attempting a mobile phone lookup, especially if it is a business phone number. It is possible that a user would input his or her phone number in a service for which he or she desires finer-grained usability, similar to other platforms. Given such possible ambiguity in user perspectives, trust models are essential in online services that offer valuable content to both users and clients.

To gain insights into user motivations and perceived effectiveness of free phone number lookups, we conducted an online survey and solicited user feedback from two different groups. The survey included questions on the nature of the search, problems experienced in phone number search, general and specific perceptions of effectiveness of search engines and other sites, and other phone number search alternatives. The survey was posted on social media to alert a wider audience of potential phone number lookups. In total, 696 people filled out the survey across a wide range of demographics, reflecting a larger population of potential users of phone number lookups.

To solicit user feedback, we relied on a static web page of frequently asked questions on phone number lookups. Over the years, people have filled out forms describing their user experience with a phone number lookup, especially the reported problems. Collectively, the pages ask for user experiences across a wide range of phone number lookup scenarios, including query types, problems experienced, and whether the user likes or dislikes the website. The two forms have accumulated 194 user responses from 2015 to 2022. Collectively, the forms ask about search outcomes and perceived effectiveness of various sites. Furthermore, 64 of the responses explicitly refer to searches with a sentiment about "like" or "dislike". What is especially useful about both the survey and overall user feedback is that they provide context on when the search is being done and what problems are being experienced.

9.2. Case Studies of User Experiences

While supported by quantitative survey results, a few case studies of individuals' phone number lookup experiences further detail the main advantages, limitations, problems, and ethical concerns associated with these lookup services. Some participants in this research have expressed a desire to have what they perceived as bias-free content filtering within phone number infrastructure. One participant uses a paid service to find numbers he doesn't recognize. But he has also been on the other side of the lookup task. He reported, "I've been on the other side of that, for people trying to contact tenants. A lot of tenants use phones instead of mail, so this is a tool to contact them especially if you're a landlord. Any type of legal action is going to create a situation where there's a lot of power disparity. This analogy would be like trying to search online to find someone based on names and location. These services help level the playing field."

In contrast to his descriptions of the tools as leveling the field, another participant described having difficulty finding contact information for a local business that she had heard had a reputation for being a pioneer of the artisanal ice cream movement. She remembers that with this business—not yet written up in local or national papers—making the leap to reach out to them "required more digging. I think I just looked up and down their page, and then found a phone number, but I think that was after I was stuck."

10. Future of Phone Number Lookups

10.1. Trends in Technology

There are many consumer data services available today, but more will be developed in the future using the same techniques. The development of bulk data acquisition services and applications have made it easier for customers to build up a phone book of mobile numbers with useful data appended to those numbers. In parallel, the use of data and networks of scrapers are providing companies with ever-growing sources of operationally ready phone number lists. These sources of data are used by businesses in ever-greater numbers, particularly for business purposes, such as advertising, fraud detection, and sales prospecting.

What we shall not have in the future is anonymity for ordinary daily transactions. Cellular firms actively de-anonymize real-time wireless cellular location and call data and continue to sell it to companies in the physical danger, marketing, and law enforcement sectors, the use of which for marketing is often tacitly endorsed by government authorities. More and more companies sell call log data for accurate retroactive reconstitution of travel together with collections of private information by mass number collection and analysis. Targeted web advertising hides the costs of these services. In the corporate world, the service selling is occurring through consortia which sell ads for target customers without using name identifiers, relying instead on shared resonance patterns generated together with location filings. In the advertising industry, these observations are used as tracking after digital fingerprinting to target consumers within crowds for marketing and called the first derivative of a digital fingerprint.

10.2. Predictions for Privacy and Ethics

Increased communication with businesses will expose consumers to marketing threats if they do not exercise more serious privacy protection. The recently established Cyber Safety Review Board may consider the increasing use of phone number lookups to aid unwanted advertising to be a threat to the national economy, since that economy, like all empires, makes money off of increased consumer spending. Businesses will then be motivated to give money to the ruling party in order to reduce services to consumers. New regulations and increased promotion by ethical principles should emerge to counter this act of manipulating consumers while failing to protect them.

10.1. Trends in Technology

Free phone number lookups are a product of several different trends, working together in a smorgasbord of technology: the decline in privacy for public figures, website user population growth, technological advances in search, social media platforms, user-generated content, and machine learning natural language extraction procedures. For the most part these trends tend to be accelerating. The establishment of user-generated content megasites has registered billions of records mostly in the past ten years. The pages of public figures have a high likelihood of announcing contact point information such as phone numbers. Search engines have also improved over the years such that finding user-generated content information is much easier than just on the website of the person of interest. Development of user-generated content megasites has grown chronologically and in support of news cycles. The search engines for the user-generated content megasites have also ameliorated these feasts. Coupled with news interest cycles that peak and trough in the same event-related chronology, the number of public figures who peak on social media is almost half again greater during major events than when perusing social media site archives.

Research on natural language processing, creating and applying unsupervised classification of relations between topics has identified problems and extracted solutions to leveraging user-generated content, particularly short text records into machines that understand conceptually what was written about what, when, and where. The entity relation classification results and methods have revealed a path toward more practical automated extraction of the contents of user-generated content, automating the commonsense knowledge learning task for natural language processing. As a prime instance of production technologies, user-generated content monitoring, mining, extraction, and storage are economic goods that have shown promises of general usefulness.

10.2. Predictions for Privacy and Ethics

We predict that free phone number lookup services will continue to operate in the shadows of legality, exposing issues related to privacy and ethics. Currently, these services mostly involve simple indexes. The choice of data subjects depends on callers, primarily harassing callers. Because of the research and media attention, we think one service is an outlier among similar tools and that another is ending support, paving the way for user choices in determining displayed names and other fields close to a user's number. However, the popularity of these tools points to a demand for richer and deeper user-friendly telephoning experiences, based on variation and integration of data sources. Potential moderation of harmful or misleading information and ease of use of moderation tools will be two important design challenges for integrative versions of these services that researchers or developers may consider.

Combining the methods of indexing with moderation could yield exciting results. For example, a moderation tool may use a user number or social media contact to allow verification claims with varying confidence. Services manage a set of verified or moderated data and a larger set of user-contributed phonebook information. The fact that these services use a real-time call origin to a mostly public number could make moderation easier. Users may be on a search engine in real time, but this information is in a condensed form and could be available only for some short time after a call. In this way, such services could balance the authoritative nature of more closed data services with user-oriented moderation in a community-like spirit, similar to that of certain online services.

11. Conclusion

Taking everything we have explored in the previous chapters into account, we can conclude that the effectiveness and ethics of free phone number lookups is a very challenging topic to think about. This process is extremely easy and produces valid and concrete results available to everyone with an internet connection. The only reservations come from phone numbers that an individual voluntarily and purposely made available on the web although looking up that number can result in some damage to that user. Thus, the ethical complexity around that issue revolves around the distinction between two groups: the ones that did make their numbers available for a given reason and the ones that are private. However, all the paid services that we have reviewed have not offered a solution for this dilemma.

As a result, the only solution is to make a research question, do we want to offer free information that may damage someone or should we restrict ourselves, ignore the problem and answer the questions of those who are willing to pay for unethical information? It is necessary to recognize that such information would only be unethical if the user wanted to keep his or her data accessible for the web. Otherwise, the ethical weight would not exist. At the same time, doing a reverse phone lookup can offer you valid and appropriate results, enabling you to take the right decision. The decision we made in the collection of our dataset, based on the information available from the free telephone directories, was to offer our user the best work possible to help them with their questions about people they want to contact.