Did you know that two out of three adults in the U.S. get a scam call every week? This is what a recent survey by the Pew Research Center uncovered. The findings are certainly alarming, especially considering that Americans lost $16.6 billion to online scams last year, with the majority of it initiated via phone.

Naturally, you would want to think twice the next time you get a call from a number you don’t recognize. And it’s not just fraudulent calls you must avoid.

Take telemarketing spam and robocalls, for instance. According to Truecaller, phone users in the U.S. receive around 3.1 billion of them each month. And if you thought that looks like a typo, here’s another piece of statistics that will make you sit up: Americans collectively wasted 9.7 million days talking to spam callers in a 12-month period!

The bottom line is, answering a call from an unknown number can often lead to more negative consequences than positive ones. But how exactly can you find out who is calling if the number isn’t saved in your contact list? Here’s how.

Run a Reverse Number Search on Nuwber

Nuwber’s reverse number search service is a pretty straightforward feature, where you enter an unknown number in the site’s search bar and click Search. You don’t need to worry about the number format here since the platform automatically arranges what you enter into a default format, making it easier to look up a caller.

So, what can Nuwber find for you? To begin with, the site could dig up the first and last name of a phone number’s legal owner.

It doesn’t stop there. Nuwber could pull up all sorts of other personal information about the relevant individual to help you learn more about them. This can include their aliases, age, address, social media profiles, and even criminal records. Plus, the platform can also identify previous owners of a number (in case you want to look up an unidentified caller from a few months or years back).

Activate Caller ID

Many phone carriers offer a caller ID service to their users, which displays the number and its owner’s name to help you identify calls. (In certain instances, you might also see the geographic location of the owner.) Some telecommunication companies provide this facility for free, while many, such as AT&T, charge an activation and/or monthly fee for using the service.

However, keep in mind that this option has a few limitations. For example, callers can choose to hide their numbers to prevent caller ID services from identifying them.

Spoofing numbers is also common (this is when a scammer disguises their number with a different one). And to make matters worse, phone carriers often allow users to decide how they would like their names to appear on the call receiver’s display. This obviously creates an opportunity for shady actors to hide their true identities.

Download a Caller ID App

These are applications designed to identify incoming calls and text messages on your smartphone. But what makes them different from your carrier’s caller ID service? The apps maintain databases of numbers flagged by their users as scam or spam. These are used to alert others about unwanted calls. Moreover, many apps offer caller ID services for free, while paid options provide additional features and ad-free alternatives.

On the flip side, caller ID apps typically build databases based on their users’ contact lists. As a result, a name they display to identify a caller can sometimes be inaccurate or incomplete when a user has saved it incorrectly, with a nickname, or with typos.

Despite that, these apps are still pretty useful for figuring out who’s calling you in real-time. But remember to download a reputable app with a substantially large contact database.

Google the Number

Phone numbers can appear in various places online. For example, businesses can list their contact details on their websites and commercial business directories. Individuals can add their numbers to advertisements they post on marketplaces like eBay and Etsy. By finding these, you could put a name to the

number and, hopefully, get more context regarding who the caller is and why they might have called you.

The fastest way to identify websites with useful information is to perform a keyword search on Google. All you need to do is type the phone number and press Enter. To find exact matches, you can add open and closed quotation marks. This could help filter out partial number matches to, say, serial numbers or other phone numbers.

Note that, unlike Nuwber, Google is more sensitive to the specific number format you use. So, if you can’t find any relevant search results, you might want to try a few different phone number formats.

Search on Social Media

Networking sites like Facebook, X, and LinkedIn are important sources of user-generated content, which makes them excellent tools for finding information.

Also, remember, people often share bad experiences on social networks to alert others to things like scams, spam, and call harassment. So, if the number you are concerned about has been associated with anything like that, there’s a good chance you might hear about it in the social chatter.

But can’t a Google search discover such posts, comments, and bios from social media? Not always. It is because not all content that appears on Facebook and similar sites is accessible to the public. For instance, some people make their profiles visible only to platform users. When this is the case, search engines won’t be able to crawl those pages and produce them on their SERPs. However, by logging in to a networking platform, you can search most of its content.

Final Thoughts

Nowadays, unknown callers can expose you to all kinds of unwanted trouble, like shady marketing schemes and data theft. So, if you don’t recognize a number, it’s important to let the call go to voicemail and find out who the number belongs to before returning the call.

What if you answer by mistake? Avoid sharing personal information or responding to requests. Hang up, authenticate the caller, and ring them back using a verified number.

As an added precaution, register your phone number with the Do Not Call Registry to prevent telemarketers from harassing you. If you think you have been

contacted by a scammer, block their number and report them to the FTC and your local law enforcement agency.