For seniors and women living alone, receiving unwanted phone calls or prank calls can be particularly unsettling. You have received a mysterious phone call on your phone or on a spouse's phone. You may be asking whose phone number is this? There are a few quick and easy strategies at your fingertips. I would recommend that you use a reverse phone lookup service if you want to ensure results and receive a comprehensive report. You can also do these very easy things.

The first thing that you can do is to call the number up. You can call the number yourself or have someone else call the number. Make sure than you hide your identity and call from a undisclosed phone number. Remember, the purpose of the call is to trace the phone numbers owner.

Another thing you can do is run a simple search engine search. Type the phone number into a search engine like Google, MSN, or Yahoo. This is a very useful strategy in finding a phone numbers that belong to businesses or telemarketers. It is not particularly helpful in helping you identify cell phone users however.

You can also look up a cell phone number on a free phone directory site like Anywho, 411, or the Whitepages. It would be basically the same thing as looking up a phone number in your physical Whitepages Book, but the service is national which is a good thing.

Your other option is to use a paid phone directory service. For a fee you can look up any cell phone number in their directory. If you are sure that the phone number comes from a cell phone then this is an OK option. I would warn you that these sites are usually incomplete. They have to wait for the carriers to give them information and are usually poorly updated.

The best option in my opinion is to use a reverse cell phone search. You simply type the phone number into the site and you instantly receive a report that shows you who a phone number belongs to, their address, phone carrier, and connection status. They are incredibly quick and their database is updated more quickly than other of your online options.

You should try the first 2 options if you are completely clueless as to here the phone call came from. If you have a suspicion of who the person is, then I'd go for the paid phone directory or reverse phone search, to save you time. The reverse phone searches usually run you less than ten dollars for a single report.