Getting a call on a phone without caller ID can be confusing, and it once was nearly impossible to find the names of people associated with a cell phone number. There are now several reverse-lookup directory services that can tie a name to a cell phone number. Even a garden-variety search engine can do it.
Using a General Search Engine
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Step 1
Navigate to a search engine, such as Google, Bing or Yahoo! in your browser. Google and Bing both primarily search the publicly available listings of land-lines, but a significant amount of land-line numbers have been migrated to cellphones that enable the search engines to identify the caller names.
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Step 2
Enter the desired cellphone number into the search box.
Step 3
Look at the results that are displayed. The name associated with a cell number is often displayed. If the number was originally a land-line number you may also be able to find the original location it was assigned to on a map. Also, Google or Bing may pull up the phone number as part of someone's social networking page or publicly posted resume, which may net you more information about the person than just their name.
Using Cell Revealer
Step 1
Navigate to Cell Revealer (see Resources). Cell Revealer is a free service that sends your phone number query to the national Caller ID Database, which is more extensive than an aggregation of all residential and business listings. It also gets updated more frequently. After enough queries, Cell Revealer will eventually start nagging you to pay for the service.
Step 2
Enter the desired cellphone number.
Step 3
Look at the results that are displayed. Cell Revealer only works for phone numbers for the U.S. and Canada. If the phone number doesn't have an individual's name associated with it, Cell Phone Revealer will give what information it has, but that may simply get a useless result of UNKNOWN. Also, if Cell Phone Revealer is used on a phone that's part of a company calling plan, it'll show the name of the business (or person) paying for the calling plan, not the name of the person using the phone.
Using PhoneLookup
Step 1
Navigate to PhoneLookup (see Resources). Phone Lookup is representative of many bare-bones cellphone reverse look-up websites. It queries an aggregation of publicly posted information about phone numbers. If the desired cell number was once posted in a residential database, it may show up here.
Step 2
Enter the desired cell phone number.
Step 3
Look at the results that are displayed. For a land-line, Phone Lookup will show you the Google Maps of the area the land-line is assigned. However, it won't report whether the number is a land-line phone number ported to a cellular phone. Unlike Cell Revealer, it doesn't eventually nag you to start paying for the service.