Free and paid online tools allow to find massive amount of data on anyone with just a name and a phone number. Check out the list including my take on paid background check websites (it's really bad out there)

Gathering basic information about a person is one of the first steps of any investigation. Sometimes, having a first name and a phone number is enough to build a case using open-source tools available online. Some of them provide basic information for free and suggest paying a small fee to uncover a full report. Unfortunately, not all services are up to date and can give many details on previous phone owners only. Examples of free and paid OSINT phone lookup services are provided below:

• Search Engines: start by searching for a phone number in quotation marks and using different formats of the number. Adding more personal information or even a potential location can bring more specific results

• Social Media Search: social media apps show accounts of people in a phone contact list. Adding a phone number to phone contacts and allowing the apps to have access to your contacts can be a solution for some investigations.

Phone Lookups

Phone reverse search services are the fastest way to find a lot of info. I used a phone number that belongs to me for many years to check how updated the databases are, including the paid websites.

• Phone lookups with basic information for free

  • Truecaller: the website or an app allows to see how a phone number is recorded in other people’s contact lists. I had cases when a person in question had a last name, a full name, or an occupation/ business name there. The service requires a sign-in and access to a contact list. It was able to identify my phone number correctly with a full name

  • PeopleSearchNow: the service showed my full name, age, and my last four addresses for free, with the potential to see a full report of a fee

  • TruePeopleSearch: it found my full name, age, and old addresses

  • NumLookup: the website found my full name and my age

  • Epieos: the service allows to see if a phone number was used in Skype or Google. Website signup will show Skype information, but to see Google data, users need to pay. The service found information on my phone number

  • IntelTechniques: the popular OSINT website that helps to reach many phone reverse lookups with one button

• Other free reverse phone lookups but with outdated information. No one of them found my data in connection to the phone number, but it showed previous owners and their details

  • FastPeopleSearch

  • ZabaSearch

  • SpyDialer

  • USA People Search

  • AnyWho

  • ReversePhoneLookup

  • USPhoneBook

  • That’s Them

  • CyberBackgroundChecks

• Popular paid reverse phone lookup websites

  • Catfish: the service provided a massive amount of true information: relatives, addresses, emails, phone numbers, former workplaces, and schools. Some information belonged to the previous owners of the phone, but my data was identified correctly

  • PeopleFinders: the service found my name and all previous owners and my old addresses but not the current one

  • Whitepages: the website didn’t find any current information about my phone number, only previous owners

  • Spokeo: same here, only people who previously owned the phone number

  • BeenVerified: same here

  • Intelius: the website has a very long and complicated search with many windows to click, outdated information, and only previous owners of the phone number

  • Dehashed: a paid database of leaked data, including phone numbers, can be used to identify additional websites where a person can be registered.

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• The rise of employment scams in the digital age