How to know who owns a number that calls you

It is very common in our day to day to find that they call us unknown numbers. Or, if, as is my case, you have the phone with the ringtone muted, you may pick up your terminal and find that you have a missed call from a number that is not on your agenda. The normal thing in these cases would be to return the call to try to discern who has tried to contact us, but today, in a world where telephone scams are the norm, this method may compromise our privacy even more. What alternatives do we have? In this article we will see how to identify a call even if we don’t have the number in our phone book.

How to know who is calling you with WhatsApp or Google

First of all, we are going to see what options we have to find out the origin of a phone number with tools that, at first, do not seem to be designed for it. If we have been called from what looks like a mobile phone, we always have the possibility to open a browser on our phone and go to the URL https://api.whatsapp.com/send?phone=34xxxxxxxxx, where the xxxxxxxxx are the unknown phone number:

Start WhatsApp chat with unknown number

If you allow us to send a message from WhatsApp, we can discard it as spam. If it does not appear as a possible contact in the messaging application (or we are informed that the phone number is not in WhatsApp), most likely it is an unwanted phone number:

Number not present in WhatsApp

In addition to this method, you can always resort to looking for the number on Google, or on one of the many websites that can be found on the Internet. One of the most reliable in this regard is ListaSpam. When you get there, use the search box to find the unknown number and click on the magnifying glass:

Search for a number in ListaSpam

If the number has received reports of spam on the page (possible due to the intense activity of its user community), something similar to this will appear:

Number marked as spam by users

How to identify unknown calls with the phone app

Since most of the unknown numbers that we will receive calls from are probably trying to sell us something, it is a good idea to have the Google Phone app installed. If you have a terminal with pure Android (either from the Pixel family or from the Android One family), this application is incorporated by default. Some manufacturers such as Xiaomi also incorporate it in their terminals, and by coming as a standard application, they already have an antispam filter activated at the factory. If you don’t have the application, download and install it through the button that we show you right here.

In any case, open the application and go to its settings to check that the antispam filter is activated. Once inside the settings, click on Caller ID and spam:

Google Phone app settings

On the screen that will appear, make sure that you activate all the available options:

Caller ID Options Enabled

Ready, this will be enough to filter the vast majority of spam calls.

Other apps to discover who is calling you on Android

Recommending an application of this type is not always easy, because these apps they require access to relatively sensitive data such as phone numbers and contacts. It is important that you stop to think about how much of your privacy you give up, for a service that does exactly what the title of this article says. Do they have any benefit over what we’ve seen from Google’s phone? The truth is that they are, as they are more accurate at detecting unwanted calls and, in general, they have a very active user community that helps keep spam phones up to date.

TrueCaller, one of the best known

Calls blocked in TrueCaller

TrueCaller is the quintessential application to detect spam calls. What makes this attractive app It is something that we discussed above: its very extensive community of users. By having such a large community, it offers a very complete list of numbers.

This is achieved thanks to the registration of the phone number that users must do in TrueCaller before being able to start using it, with which users are automatically included in the application’s whitelist. Once installed, you just have to grant it access to the features you request, and unwanted calls will begin to be blocked and restricted automatically.

Hiya, a good alternative

Hiya call list

Hiya is very similar to TrueCaller in terms of operation, with very similar caller identification functions and an equally large database of spam phone numbers.

There are two aspects that differentiate it from the previous one: on the one hand, a more polished and modern interface than that of its more direct competition. On the other hand, the possibility of searching for companies from the application itself. Like TrueCaller, just give it the necessary permissions once installed and it will be ready to go.

Combine all possible techniques to have the maximum options when it comes to identifying a number. Then you choose whether to do nothing or block the contact directly.