10 apps and websites to find out who owns a phone number

Lists TODAY TALK ABOUT

Subscribe to Engadget Android

Receive an email a day with our articles:

No commentsIván Ramírez@ivan_r

There are two types of people: those who pick up the phone even though they don't know who's calling, and those who hang up and search the Internet for who just called them. If you are in this last group, today we present you 10 Android applications and web pages that you can use to check who just called you.

If your mobile alerts you that someone has called you and you have no idea who the phone number belongs to, there are many websites and applications with which you can identify a caller. Then you choose if you want to block the phone number or not.

Apps or websites?

In order for you to discover who is calling you, we will recommend five Android applications and five other web pages to do reverse searches, so you can choose what suits you best. If you want direct integration with the system, then an app is the best for you.

In Xataka Móvil, the panic of picking up the phone is increasingly real: what is telenophobia

Now, keep in mind that many of these applications use your data to provide feedback on their services or, in other words, obtain your list of contacts to add them to their database. It's best to read the usage policy carefully, and if it's not something you agree with, use web pages to look up phone numbers manually.

Your mobile phone app

If you are not much of installing applications unless it is extremely necessary, you will be happy to know that the phone applications of some Android mobiles integrate caller identification, as is the case of the Google phone application.

The Google phone app will show you who is calling you in some cases (for example, a company number) and will protect you from spam calls, with the possibility of automatically blocking them. The downside is that you can't search for numbers on your own, but it applies only to those who call you.

Telephone

truecaller

With over 500 million downloads on Google Play, Truecaller is the most popular caller ID app on Android. This huge user base is the main driver of its success, since it is the users themselves who evaluate the phone numbers, marking them as spam.

Photographers, why?

— Coast Fri Jul 23 20:56:05 +0000 2021

With TrueCaller you can get information about who is calling you, automatically block numbers recognized as spam and even record calls. Of course, not all the functions are free and to get the most out of it you need to buy Truecaller Premium.

Truecaller: Caller ID & Log, Spam

Whoscall

Another veteran application for identifying phone calls on Android is Whoscall, with more than 10 million downloads on Google Play. In the same way as in the previous case, you will be able to know who is calling you in a window before picking up the phone.

You can use its database to automatically filter spam calls and curiously, it has an offline database to search for phone numbers from the application itself.

Whoscall - Caller ID & Block

CallApp

CallApp is another popular all-in-one caller ID app, which attempts to display a complete profile of who is calling you, including their latest social media posts (if they are public and linked to that profile).

In addition to identifying who is calling you, you can also use CallApp to record calls, although you will have the same problems as in other applications if you use Android 9 Pie or higher: the recording uses the microphone and the other person will be heard very softly in most situations. the cases.

CallApp: Caller ID and Recorder

showcaller

ShowCaller has an icon very similar to the previous application, and if we talk about functions there are not too many differences. In this case, the database is built thanks to the collaboration of its base of 15 million users.

ShowCaller shows you who is calling you and allows you to block a number directly from the screen to pick up the phone. An interesting fact is that caller identification does not require an Internet connection.

Showcaller - ID and Block

SpamList

We change the third to go from Android applications to web pages, with the advantage that you do not need to install anything to obtain the information. The downside is that in this case you will only get the information and calls suspected of being spam are not blocked.

In Xataka AndroidHow to block a contact on Android

ListSpam is a simple and beautifully designed website for reverse phone number lookups. You do not need to register and you can also collaborate by adding your comments on any phone number.

WhoCallsMe

Another simple website that you can use to identify calls thanks to reverse phone number lookup is WhoCallsMe. Being an international page, you may have more luck if the caller is from another country.

Users can add their own comments, although the page will try to figure out at least the country and area. You can also add your own comments about a phone number.

WhoCalled

Another minimalist web service to check who has called you receives the predictable name of whocalled.es. The web page in question only has a search engine to carry out reverse searches of telephone numbers.

The website will try to give you some information about any phone number - such as what area code it is - as well as showing you the reports of other users. You can fill out a report yourself, marking whether the call was from telemarketing, a contest, aggressive advertising or others.

Tellows

Tellows is a caller identification service through its website with which you can search for any phone number to see what its user community has to say about it.

As a reverse phone number lookup page, it includes some more details than others, like statistics of how many searches have been done for this number in the last month and a graph comparing scores and searches. Users can rate the call in a range from 1 to 9.

PhoneSpam

We end our list with another website that serves as a reverse phone number search engine. In this case, a Top Ten is also included with the numbers that make the most spam and the most searched numbers.

In the information of a telephone number, a useful graph is shown reviewing the different types of complaints so that you can decide what to do with it without having to read all the comments, which in some cases can be hundreds.

Share 10 apps and websites to find out who owns a phone number