Trace a Mobile Phone Number

There are several reasons why you would want to trace a mobile phone number. Perhaps you are getting harassing or annoying phone calls from an unlisted number and you want to find out who is behind those calls. Whatever your motivation, it is perfectly possible to trace a cell phone number, but the process is not quite as easy as one would hope.

Trace a Mobile Phone Number

What exactly does it mean when someone wants to trace a phone number? Well, this is when you take just the phone number and extract all sorts of information from that number. By tracing the number, it is possible to find out not only the name of the person to whom the number is registered, but also his or her physical billing address, service provider and base location.

This is decidedly different from using GPS to track a cell phone. This latter technique is more to find the exact real-time coordinates of a particular handset, whereas tracing a mobile phone number entails finding out more information about the account.

No Central Directory

When it comes to most (listed) landlines, it is usually possible to do a free reverse phone lookup using a variety of different websites and 411 services. By providing a number, they’ll tell you the same information you would find in a regular directory or phone book. Unfortunately, this same information isn’t as readily available for mobile phones.

In fact, there is no official cell phone directory that is freely available to the public. Individual service providers, like Telus Mobility, may have a full directory of their subscribers, but there isn’t one that encompasses all nationwide users. Furthermore, these numbers are not publicly listed like how landlines are.

Without a central directory, it can be a little challenging to get accurate phone number searches.

Finding Cell Phone Service Provider Information

So, if there is no official directory, what can you expect when you trace a mobile phone number? Well, there are a number of websites on the Internet that will freely provide you with some basic information when you give them a cell phone number. The appropriately named trace-a-phone-number.com, for example, will give you the city, province/state, and country where the cell phone is registered.

This does not necessarily reflect where the actual phone is physically located, nor does it indicate the mailing address of the owner. Instead, the city and state information is reflective of the primary relay station for that phone’s service provider. For Fido users in Vancouver, for example, the location will come up as one of Vancouver’s suburbs (New Westminster).

Using this basic information, you can better narrow down the location of the mobile phone user, but you’d largely get almost the same data based on just the area code. Cell phone service providers don’t publicly release much more information than this, possibly because of security and privacy concerns. These are the same concerns that people have about retrieving text messages online of phones that do not belong to you.

Paid Services

If you are highly motivated to trace a mobile phone number, the only real solution is to pay someone to do it. Using your favorite search engine, you’ll find countless websites that offer this kind of service, but their level of legitimacy and privacy will vary widely. As such, you should definitely proceed with extreme caution.

It is also important that you shop around for the best deal, because the pricing on these sites also varies widely. Some may be as cheap as $15 for an individual reverse cell phone lookup while others charge up to $200 to trace a mobile phone number. NationwideSearch, for example, has a fee of $189 for a cell phone reverse lookup.

The data that they provide includes the cell phone owner’s name and full address, as well as the possibility of finding out their social security number, past and present phone numbers, 15 years of address history, driver’s license number, date of birth, and more. There are certainly legal ramifications to such an investigation, so do be careful.
[tag]tracking,cell phones[/tag]