Periodically, notifications about missed calls appear on my phone and it’s always interesting to find out who called, and most importantly, whether I need to call back. It’s one thing if a friend or acquaintance simply changed their phone number, and quite another thing when polling services, spammers, or even scammers call you.
Fortunately, today it is not difficult to identify a caller by phone number. This can be done absolutely legally and free of charge. Let's look at the most effective and efficient ways to get information about a person by phone number.
Is it really possible to find out who owns a mobile number?
As is known, the legislation of the Russian Federation, by the letter of Law No. 304-FZ of November 2, 2013, obliges Russian mobile operators to enter into agreements for the sale of SIM cards, and to enter the passport data of subscribers into such agreements. Anonymous street sale of SIM cards is prohibited. Now, behind every Russian mobile number there is a very real person, whose passport details and place of registration can be determined if necessary.
This information is not provided to everyone, but only to specialized authorities (police, FSB, court, and so on).
These legislative norms do not prevent enterprising citizens from circumventing these prohibitions and purchasing SIM cards from their own hands, or issuing them to some marginalized people. Nevertheless, behind each number in Russia there is a completely identified person, and this is what distinguishes Russian mobile numbers, for example, from Ukrainian ones.
If you are wondering who is the owner of a particular phone, then the Internet provides you with a fairly wide field for identifying the owner of the number. This can even be done for free and without registration. Let us describe each of these methods in detail.
This may be useful: Why the connection is interrupted during a phone call.
Legal methods
Finding out who the number is registered to is difficult - there are almost no legal methods. If the caller makes intrusive calls, threatens violence, or simply calls and remains silent on the phone, write a statement to the police. In the case of simple hooliganism, a person will get off with an administrative fine or criminal prosecution - the nature of the measures depends on the seriousness of the offense committed. But the police will not provide complete data about this subscriber, although they will invite you to familiarize yourself with the offender for further investigation.
How to find the owner of a phone for free through search engines
Using popular search engines such as Google, Yandex, Bing and others. The simplest and most effective way to determine the owner of a phone number without registration is free. If the number that called you is listed somewhere on the Internet (for example, it belongs to a public company), then you are likely to find it through search engines.
When entering a number into the search bar, experiment with the format of the number. Use different variations both with and without the country and operator code, start with +,7,8 and so on.
Eg:
+7 (9xx) xxx-xx-xx 79xx-xxxxxxx 89xx-xxxxxxx
It is likely that you will only find one of the tested options.
Sites with reviews by numbers without registration
The next step in finding the person who owns the phone number is to visit specialized sites. Which contain information on many numbers and user reviews for them.
Among these sites:
- who-calling.rf;
- zvonil.octo.net;
- zvonili.com;
- cejnomer.info;
- bloodhound.com;
- neberitrubku.ru and others.
Usually their value is not in the general information about the room provided by the site, but in real user reviews. Based on the latter, you can determine for free and without registration what kind of number it is, who it belongs to, and for what reasons they are calling from it.
All you have to do is go to such a site, enter the full number of the phone you are interested in in a special field, and view the data received.
With regard to searching on these sites, the same advice is relevant as in the case of search engines. Try different spellings until you find the information you need to find out who exactly the number belongs to.
A special feature is the free service MySMSBox.ru, which not only provides information about the number, but also looks for mentions of it on social networks.
We check the number using online services
There are specialized online services that collect information about callers based on reviews from other users. Data about scammers’ phones, advertisements, as well as “strange calls”, such as silence on the phone, are regularly posted on the Internet by users on such sites. You can also leave your review here.
Online services like this can be very useful because people often tell a detailed story about the call they received. So, one day I found a story about “bank employees” (actually scammers) calling me, exactly as described by another person. The phone numbers were the same.
The most popular sites are:
- mysmsbox.ru;
- who-calling.rf;
- zvonili.com;
- ktozvonil.ru;
- hcpeople.ru.
All services are built on the same principle. Simply put the phone number in the search bar and click the “Find” button. After a few seconds of waiting, you will be presented with the results.
Such sites mainly provide information about various organizations, as well as scammers. If the number belongs to a private person, then most likely there will be no information about him. In this case, proceed to the next step.
A way to find out who owns a phone through mobile applications
A fairly effective way to find out for free who is calling from an unknown number is to use mobile applications without registration.
Among the most popular and free, we note the following:
| Applications: | Explanation: |
| "Who is calling" | After installing on the phone and receiving a call, it shows information about the calling unknown number. |
| "Get Contact" (Android, iOS,) | Allows you to identify the caller and effectively blocks spam. Contains a large database of numbers. |
| "Yandex" (Android, iOS) | After introducing caller ID into the functionality of the Yandex application, the application received additional praise. In the application settings, select the “Automatic Caller ID” option, and then click on the “Enable” button. To evaluate unknown numbers, Yandex uses a directory database. |
| "Caller ID" | Another popular application with similar functionality on Android. |
You can use the capabilities of these tools both on the go (while receiving calls) and in reference mode by typing the desired number into the search bar of such an application.
Checking through the ad site (Avito)
Another effective way to “get through” a person by phone number is to look for information about him in advertisements on Avito. Most of us have used this site to sell items that we no longer need. At the same time, the resource shows information not only about active advertisements posted by the user on the site, but also about completed sales. In addition, you can see the name of the owner of the number, as well as the approximate area of the city from where it is proposed to pick up the displayed goods. Most often, this location coincides with the user's work or home address.
So, to search by phone number on a well-known ad platform, there is a special service called “Avita mirror”. To find a person using it, follow these steps:
- Go to the service website: mirror.bullshit.agency/search_by_phone. If the browser does not open the link, use any VPN program that changes the IP address of your computer. More detailed information about VPNs can be found in the article on our website about VPNs.
- In the “Number” column, indicate the phone number you need to find.
- Click on the “Search in advertisements on Avita” button.
- Study the results.
The service should return all active and completed sales listings associated with the specified number. At the same time, I noticed that the service does not always work accurately. Having several closed transactions on Avito, I did not find any information about them using my number. However, after I entered my friend’s number into the search window, the service correctly showed all the advertisements she posted on the site (including completed ones).
And although this method of punching a number does not always give a 100% result, I still recommend considering it as one of the possible tools for searching for information.
Popular instant messengers for finding the owner of a number
It’s no secret that messengers are used by billions of people around the world. Quite often, such programs are tied to the user’s number, and he enters not only his photos, but also some identification data into his profile.
Thus, you can enter an unfamiliar number into the phone book of your smartphone under some convenient name, and then call this number through popular instant messengers - Viber, Telegram, WhatsApp and others. Typically, instant messengers make it easy to find contacts from your phone book. Therefore, if the calling number has a profile in these messengers, you can easily detect it.
For example, in the case of Viber, you must first enter an unfamiliar calling number into your mobile phone book under some convenient name (for example, “Stranger”). After this, be sure to turn on the Internet on your phone, launch your Viber, and click on the round button to create a conversation.
A list of people with whom you can create a conversation will open. Search for “Stranger” in the list, and it’s quite possible that not only his profile will be there, but also his photo.
This also works with other messengers. Moreover, if you do not send any messages to this person, he will never know that you were interested in his number.
How to dial a number through Viber?
The owner of the number most likely uses at least one instant messenger. If trying through WhatsApp and Telegram was unsuccessful, you should try doing it through Viber. To do this, you need to repeat the same steps as for WhatsApp.
First of all, you need to add the number to your contact list. If this person is registered in Viber, under his number it will be possible to call or write to him with a messenger icon. Next, all that remains is to go to the chat with this person, click on the “Write” action and look at his photo.
Sberbank Online will show who owns a certain phone
The network functionality of the popular Sberbank Online allows you to use a phone number to determine for free the name and patronymic of the person to whom this number is assigned.
The identification algorithm is not entirely free and consists of the following:
- Go to your Personal Account on the Sberbank website;
- Select the form for sending a money transfer by phone number. Specify the formal transfer amount of 1 ruble. In fact, we will not send anything;
- In the form for checking the transfer details, the system will show you the recipient's name and patronymic.
Social networks as a way to find the owner of a number without registration
The functionality of popular social networks - Vkontakte, Odnoklassniki, Facebook also allows you to search for any mention of a mobile phone number. And find out for free exactly who it belongs to.
For example, in the VKontakte mobile application you need to go to the “Friends” section. Then click on the plus sign in the upper right corner and select the option “Find friends in your notebook.” If you have previously entered an unfamiliar number into your address book (as described in the subsection about instant messengers), then the VK functionality can give you data about the user page registered to this phone.
This is useful to know: how to find my page on the Odnoklassniki network by last name and phone number.
Directory search
The Internet is full of electronic directories of telephone numbers. They look for subscribers both by last name, first name and patronymic, and by telephone number. In general, this tool is working, if not for one thing - the data in reference books is usually outdated. It uses databases obtained from unknown sources (perhaps someone actively scanned and digitized paper directories, or a database leak occurred somewhere).
We conducted a small experiment with a couple of number identification services. The input was a real person with a real landline number. We entered his number into the search and found information about the owner - it matched. Only one thing let us down - about 10 years ago, the number of this phone was slightly changed due to a change in the PBX number. And the man himself moved to another apartment two years ago. The conclusion is that the data in such reference books is not always up to date.
