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?
It’s all about the money…
I know they are paywalled but they give so much information.
I had a contractor that took my money and ran. I used one of those reverse lookup sites with just his name and phone number and I got his address as well as his relatives.
He did not like the fact I had a deputy serve him his court appearance or the time when I called his mother to confirm his data before the court date.
Long story short, I won the case. He claimed no assets so I will never get paid back.
Won’t help now but only deal with contractors that have a contractor license. That license number means they paid insurance into a fund so if they take the money and run, you can recover your money from the state insurance fund even if they personally don’t have any money.
It took like 3 years for the process to work through but I got back all my money from a contractor that took a payment and disappeared.
I’m not sure location but, if it’s the US my parents had something similar with the no assets thing. Someone stole their car, took it for a joy ride and burned it up the road, they were charged and given a verdict of guilty and had to pay it back, but they claimed no assets. After a few years of no payments whatsoever my mom started complaining, eventually she complained enough they started the legal process of garnishing wages. If he has a job or an income source, they can garnish that either via tax time or via the wages. Being said, the garnish system is super lax for living costs, if they are making bare min wage, you probally won’t get money out of it
It’s actual enshittification of public information. In the USA you can use whitepages.com. Also, the regional telephone company should be able to provide this.
Whitepages still wants me to pay for that names/addresses.
I just did a search and got name+address free.
Name or phone number search?
Name will typically get you address. But not a phone number search. And you have to pay for the phone number if you did address search.
I just searched up a family member’s number. Got name, approximate age, and address.
Have you visited whitepages.com lately?
I did today, but I don’t go anywhere online without an ad blocker. There is a bunch of BS services on there for criminal background check etc, but I was able to quickly get what I needed in one shot.
They got monetized by corporations, just like so many other specialized information sources.
Like you, I remember earlier days on the web where you could find all sorts of stuff for free, if you knew how to search. That included reverse phone number searches, finding people online, etc. Now it’s all trapped behind paywalls. I get that maintaining it costs money. But it’s still a bit disheartening. I guess the silver lining is that it makes it a bit harder for people’s sensitive information to be accessible to everyone (unless they pay for it, of course).
Another information category that’s gone down this route is genealogy information. Most of the good stuff there’s is being held hostage by ancestry.com and similar sites. And most online newspapers now hide their articles behind paywalls of one kind or another (there are ways around them usually, but it’s still a hassle).
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.
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)
