One of the most common questions I’ve been asked by a lot of people about doing reverse search phone numbers is “Is it legal”. I always get similar responses such as “Don’t do that just ask nicely and you’ll get your answer”, “I thought a friend of my friend told me that it’s illegal”, “You might get in jail if you do that” or something along that lines.
I completely understand their concern but there are a lot of circumstances which makes it necessary to do reverse search phone numbers and when it comes to that it’s entirely your decision to do it or not.
One thing I do understand is that we are living in a time when privacy is considered a privilege. We are very open and connected to our communities, so we need a stable ground to stand on; one of those grounds is our home. How do you feel about your home address, name of your family members, even neighbors and other personal information given to the public? I’ll tell you how I feel about it, I feel uneasy, unprotected and somehow prone to attack by some irresponsible person who just wants to have their way, the government might listen in your calls, etc. It sounds like a spy movie just landed on my life.
Back in the day when there’s no internet, I believe that to do a reverse telephone lookup, we need to go to the city hall in person, queue, pay a certain fee to get it done and even after all that, what we get is a service record that might not been updated properly. I’m sure you won’t find any cell phone number or an unlisted phone number there because they don’t have that information in public records. After all keeping records cost money. In those days, I think, even if you hire a detective to do the work for you, he will do the same thing but today, it’s not the case anymore.
Later, I will tell you my story about reverse search phone numbers, why I did it, and how I did it in a separate article, so look out for it.
Right, let’s get back to the main question; is it legal to reverse search phone numbers? My answer to that question is “It depends”. Read on, I will explain it in detail.
Doing a reverse search phone numbers is closely tied to the rules and regulations in your country, some countries such as Australia can’t do a reverse search phone numbers just because there are rules and regulations which prevented them to do it, therefore there are no reverse phone numbers directory service in those countries. But in United States there are no such rules, in fact because of information freedom act in America, we are able to do reverse phone number search as much as we want. So for people living in America, my answer to the question above is “Yes, you have an option to do it”.
