Trace Cell Phone Calls and Numbers for Free

There is, however, an insider trick to conducting your own free reverse cell phone lookup searches. Grab your pen and paper and follow along with me using the number you need to trace as we walk through this exercise.

If you’re like most citizens of this great planet, you probably visit Google, Yahoo or some other search engine on a daily basis (if not daily, at least several times per week). These search engines roam the Internet constantly indexing new websites and web pages into their vast databases. You can harness the power of Google’s search database to conduct your own free reverse cell phone number search.

Everyday, people all over the Internet unknowingly make their unlisted phone numbers and cell phone numbers publicly available over the Internet. How do they do this? Maybe they lost a dog or they’re trying to sell a car and they take out a classified ad in their local newspaper. Most newspapers nowadays publish their entire paper, including the classified section, on their websites. If the person buying the ad put their cell phone or unlisted phone number in the ad, there is a high probability that phone number is now available to search.

In addition to newspaper classifieds, people also use their cell phone numbers when they register on websites, participate in message boards and many other online endeavors. Each time they put their number down, a search engine spider is going to find it!

How does this help you and your free reverse cell phone search? Take the phone number you’re searching for and input it into the search box on your favorite search engine. Remember to try the different variations people use for phone numbers. For example, some people write their phone number in a format like 555-555-5555 while others will put it down as 555.555.5555. There are many, and I do mean many, ways people will format their phone numbers.

Try these different variations into the search engine. Try it with and without quotation marks as this will sometimes help you get better search results. In our tests, this strategy works about 40-50 percent of the time, although it often takes quite a bit of time to consider all of the variations a person may put their phone number down in.

Once you get a hit on the number, your next step is to investigate the website you found it on to see if it offers any clues to the cell phone number owner’s identity. Sometimes all you will find is actual number listed and you’re back to where you started. Other times you’ll get only a first name and no last name.

Sometimes you hit the jackpot and get the full name, address and more of the owner. Like I mentioned earlier, it can take hours to get to this point. If you don’t have hours to invest in conducting your own free reverse cell phone lookup, I suggest considering one of the other services available to make your search faster.

Is Your Cell Phone Transmitting Your Location? Cell Phone Tracking, Location Privacy and e911

Is your cell phone transmitting your location, acting like a homing beacon for whomever may wish to listen in? Cell phone tracking versus location privacy are hot topics these days. Federal e911 (enhanced 911 communications for mobile devices) rules require that your cell phone carrier be able to provide your location information in the event that you initiate a 911 call, but some consumers are reporting that their GPS cell phones are transmitting this information all the time, not just when they dial 9-1-1.

The Treo 650, for example, offers you the choice of transmitting your location all the time, or only when you make a 911 call. Consumers are reporting that Verizon provisioned Treo 650s are defaulted to report their location back to the Verizon mothership at all times, not just during an e911 call. Fortunately for those users, at least those who care about this issue and figure out to look into it, they can change that by checking “enable location privacy” in their Phone Preferences.

Phone location privacy means that your GPS-enabled phone is not transmitting your location except during an emergency call.

Think it’s not something about which you really need to worry? I mean, who would bother to track you, anyways, and how easy could it be?

Well, within the past three weeks we’ve had two reports on these pages alone about GPS technology in cell phones being used to track people on a regular basis. The Wherify Wherifone is used for tracking kids, employees, and senior citizens, and TeenArriveAlive, while pitched as a way to monitor your teen’s driving, is really a GPS cell phone and Internet-based tracking software.

So, does your GPS cell phone have a location privacy option, and is it enabled?