Luckily, there are a few quick and easy strategies online for identifying the person behind a call. All you need is a phone number.

1.Call the Number Yourself- If you are bold enough, you can call the number yourself or have someone else call the number. I advise you to keep your identity concealed and consider calling from a phone booth. Remember, the purpose of the call is to flesh out the identity of the person behind the phone number.

2.Search Engine- You can also try typing the phone number into a search engine like Google or Yahoo. This is a very useful strategy in finding out whether the phone number is coming from a telemarketer or a business that uses mass phone calling. I have to warn you though, that it is not very useful in finding cell phone numbers.

3.Phone Directories- You can also type the phone number into a free phone directory like whitepages, anywho, or 411. This is a great strategy for finding landline numbers, but again, useless for cell phone numbers.

4.Paid Cell Phone Directories- For a fee, you can subscribe to a cell phone directory. The directories are filled entirely with cell phone numbers, so if you know for sure that the phone number came from a cell phone this might be a good option. The problem is these directories are poorly updated and not very comprehensive. Most of the time, you will need to subscribe to more than one directory in order to find a number, making it a time consuming and expensive option.

5.Reverse Cell Phone Lookup- This is the easiest and quickest solution. For a small fee, you can submit the phone number to this service and they give you an instant report with the name, address, carrier, and phone connection of the person behind the phone number. Another great thing is that the results are 100 percent confidential. If you decide to run more extensive research, many of these services also run background checks on people.

In my opinion, the best option is to use a reverse cell phone lookup. A lot of people find success with the first three strategies, but if you are reading this, chances are you have exhausted those options, so I would suggest a reverse cell phone lookup.