A useful thing I need to share is my discovery of a website called Who calls me? I stumbled across it by chance after missing 13 calls on my mobile from a number I didn’t recognise or appear to have in my Contacts.
Curious and suspicious it was an automated call, I popped this persistent phone number into Google which led me to Who calls me? The site is a user-generator database of phone numbers of “telemarketers, non-profit organisations, charities, political surveyors, scam artists, and other companies that don't leave messages, disconnect once you answer, ignore the Do-Not-Call List regulations, and simply interrupt your day.”
What you do is enter the number and, like as not, you will receive confirmation that it’s a cold call about switching mobile phone network or electricity supplier. To avoid further harassment scroll through your moby’s call register and add the number to your screened call list. Not only are you spared unwanted callers, you’ve just saved the price of a phone call to talk to someone you wouldn’t want to talk to.
A search engine can also help with phone numbers in a number of different ways. For example, you could enter your own phone number to check which sites list you as a supplier.
HIE’s main switchboard number is 01463 234171 and is listed on 18,300 web pages and online documents across the globe. However, take out the space after the Inverness STD code and the string of 11 numbers yields just eleven results. Entering +44 1463 234171 brings the results back up to 1,600. So trying out various spacing combinations of the phone number is helpful to gain the widest possible trawl of web results.
It is possible to further refine the results by searching first by UK only and then the web. For example, the +44 1463 234171 search in Google pulls up a mere 58 sites and documents when the results are confined to the UK.
Obviously, any unknown phone number that turns up in missed calls can be checked via a search engine. It’s nice to know who you’re about to call rather than having to wing it when the call is answered.
Read each search engine result summary closely. A quick glance might well give you the wrong end of the stick as the heading may relate to the website the number is listed on, not the organisation to which the phone number belongs. Check the text of the summary result carefully but to be 100 per cent certain, click through to the actual site to double check.
There are online reverse directories but these are for the US and Canada mainly. Reverse phone code directories are illegal in the UK due to the Data Protection Act. The nearest you can drill down to after the STD area code is the sub district which effectively narrows the phone number down to around 1,000 lines.
Other useful phone number related sites
BT International code checker
BT phone book
Saynoto0870.com – alternatives listed for 0800, 0808, 0844, 0845, 0870 and 0871 numbers.
