Do Not Be Fooled by “Free” Reverse Cell Phone Directory Services
Cell Phone Tracer
Reverse phone lookup is a service widely utilized by a multitude of law enforcement agencies and emergency services. Also referred to as the gray pages or a reverse cell phone directory the list allows a customer’s details to be retrieved via their telephone number, and is subsequently used to trace the origin of calls for assistance. While the data employed in these circumstances contains both publicly and privately listed numbers, these fully inclusive lists are restricted solely to internal use, and are therefore deemed unthreatening to the privacy of the average citizen. Although the idea of landline subscriptions has become largely obsolete, the option to exclude your number from a public directory still exists in the event of a home phone purchase. Unfortunately, no such option exists within the largely growing industry of cellular devices, given that each cellular carrier contains a separate database of available numbers.
The ramifications of carrying such an easily tracked piece of equipment have both positive and negative aspects. When made use of in the field of law enforcement, for instance, cell phone records have often provided key information that led to the eventual apprehension of criminals, and the use of cell phone towers to triangulate one’s whereabouts has served an important function in cases related to abduction. Conversely, the relative accessibility of seemingly private cell phone records has served to alarm a vast majority of consumers. While the numbers associated with cellular carriers remain unavailable to any publicly operated directories, web-based information companies have compiled extensive lists obtained from utility resources, and continue to offer them to clients.
Organizations such as Consumers Union, a leading non-profit known for its metropolitan-based advocacy offices, have lobbied against the eventual release of cell phone numbers into public 411 and reverse number directories. While the repercussions of such a massive flood of heretofore-unseen information seem dire, one could argue that the continued and growing existence of hackers has rendered our so-called “privacy” nothing but a tenuous security blanket. Furthermore, controversial laws such as the Freedom of Information Act highlight the constantly growing need for publicly available information in the United States, and the ability of a municipal or federal government to obtain information about an individual that they themselves can’t access seems unfair to much of the population.
The inclusion of cellular numbers into the reverse directory would also highlight the tenaciously surviving industry of telemarketers and debt collectors. This industry had previously survived entirely on utilizing the reverse lookup aspect of public directories to cold-call unsuspecting consumers, prompting several online companies to create a similar directory for the purpose of identifying companies known to contact consumers by telephone. In 2003, in response to a multitude of complaints centering on the ethics and legalities of such corporations, the Federal Trade Commission created the Do Not Call Registry, prohibiting call centers from contacting numbers registered with the site after thirty-one days of their initial inclusion. One can only assume that the influx of millions of cell phone numbers into a public directory would cause a massive and immediate rush to register all numbers with the official registry before telemarketing companies could obtain them.
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