How To Trace Private Number Cell Phone Calls?

We have all received those “Private Caller” calls with no number attached to them. In most cases people have no idea how to trace such calls back to their owner. “Private Caller” is not the only label that masked calls can come with. There are “Restricted”, “Unknown” and even “No Number” masks that may appear on your caller ID.

While there are many reasons why your mobile provider may choose to use one of these masks (e.g. international calls are sometimes displayed as “Unknown” because the caller uses a prepaid phone card), the “Private Caller” and “Restricted” masks are pretty common and the reason behind them is straightforward – the person who is calling you blocked their number via special code *67 or otherwise.

It is not uncommon for pranksters to block their number before calling the victim. Scammers and con artists use the same techniques to keep their numbers unidentified.

The bad news is that you cannot call a private number back as that is the purpose of “private” and no amount of *69s will dial that private number. Here is one quick trick that might work though. Some cell phone providers disclose private numbers on your cell phone bill. So, if you log onto your cell phone account online and check the call history – the private number may come out.

Luckily, there is a more effective solution to these pesky private ID calls. There are now services like TrapCall which use what is referred to as conditional call forwarding to unblock “Restricted”, “Blocked” and other private mask calls. Basically, this technology will forward a private call to a special toll-free number (instead of your voice mail) for unmasking. After that you will receive a text message with full information about the caller – not only the number but also their name and address.

As a side point, you should remember that you can always block private callers by dialing special code *77.

Share
Posted on June 25, 2010 at 12:13 am by admin · Permalink
In: Analytics · Tagged with: , , , ,