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?
I havent used any reverse lookup search in years, I used to do it but most of them want money with not promise of info returned so I decided just doing an exact search of a phone number usually works well enough. If it doesn’t appear in an exact search of common phone number formats, its not worth it to me.