In the earliest days of my internet experience, I remember being able to do a web search for a phone number and sometimes actually find something useful. That said, this niche has long been dominated by some of the fakest, most scammy, bullshit sites on the web. From calling themselves “free” when they are not, to the fake “searching”, “sifting through results”, “correlating records” wait screens that are much like the deceptive, manipulative, and nontransparent airline industry, to the mentally manipulative exclamation point in the red warning triangle to tease you that there might be criminal records.
Why is this area of the web so scammy?
Who made it like this?
Has anyone tried to fix it?
Is there a any site out there that can actually do a reverse lookup and isn’t a cesspool of popups, pay gates, and fake loading screens?
Some actually work
I once typed in my parents number and HOLY SHIT
I saw all our past addressed on the screen
kinda creepy
But they make you pay to see more details which of course I aint doing that…
But its still creepy how its basically public info
If you search in r/privacy (yeah yeah… reddit bad I know) with terms like “name/phone + search/lookup” or “reverse lookup” or “whitepages” or similar terms… sometimes you find posts that list some of those sites…
Those with a progress bar and percentage number thing are fake, some javascript bs (i never paid for any of them so they might still be real, just the “free” thing is fake, dont do the survey stuff lmao)
Criminal records are public in the USA, so you could sift through all 50 states and find them for free if you have their name… (might be tedious, its why background check sites exist to do it automatically)