A method to identify a telephone number can sometimes be an essential service, especially if you are a single woman receiving unwanted telephone calls. Older people may also feel vulnerable to nuisance calls, and would also like a way to identify a telephone number if it keeps appearing on their phone. The main reason is the fear that the caller not only knows your phone number, but knows your address too. You, however, know nothing about the caller.

Why might you need a reverse phone search?

You can take some comfort in the fact that most of these nuisance calls are made at random. Because of their own insecurities, the sort of people who make these calls get a buzz from scaring other people, but don't want to be known. They also don't really want to know the person they're calling, and in fact are often just as scared of being found out. Research has found that prank callers quite often don't even live in the same state as their victim. However, if you are the victim, you will want to know where the call comes from, so you can take steps to identify the caller. This is where the reverse phone search is useful.

What can you do before you try to identify the telephone number?

Before we look at the reverse phone search, there are a couple of precautions you can take if you're receiving unwanted phone calls. A good idea if you're a single woman is to get a male friend or relative to record a message for you. Rather than the caller hearing you saying "Hi, it's Stacey", they will hear a guy saying something like "Hi, Kevin and Stacey are out right now". This will make them think there's a man living there too, and this will probably put them off.

Another idea is to ignore the telephone. Just tell your friends and family the problem, and let them know that you won't answer unless you're sure it's someone you know. That way, the unknown caller will probably tire of just hearing the ring tone, and stop harassing you.

Using Reverse Phone Search to identify a telephone number

Eventually, if the techniques above don't work, you will have to pay for a Reverse Phone Number Search. The reason you have to pay is that the complete, accurate data you require is not freely available, and may cost the provider a considerable amount of time and money to assemble, so they're not going to give it away for free. The good news is that you can choose different subscription options, depending on whether you just want to search for one number, or for many, and some services cost less than $10. A small price to pay for peace of mind.