About Tealook

Tealook is an independent information site. We are not a carrier, a government office or a people-search company, and none of them pays us or reviews our work. Nell Aldercott writes and edits everything you read here.

What the site does

We publish long explainers about reverse phone lookup: where the data comes from, what free and paid services deliver, how to opt out of broker sites and where the legal lines run. We would rather tell you a lookup can't help than sell you one that won't.

What the tool does and does not do

The number reader parses the digits and matches the area code against a list of regions, cities and time zones. It flags patterns such as toll-free codes, premium-rate 900 numbers and Caribbean codes that look domestic. It cannot identify an owner, name a carrier or say whether a line is mobile or landline. It also has no reputation database, so a number it finds unremarkable can still be a scam.

How we check facts

Every feature is built from first-party pages such as the Federal Trade Commission, the FCC and the phone makers' support sites, and links to them in a Sources section at the bottom. Each page shows the date of its last read-through. If a rule or a menu name changes, we update the page and the date. We do not invent surveys, statistics or reader stories, and the author page describes only what the editor does on the site.

Corrections

If something is wrong or out of date, tell us through the contact page. Corrections get answered first. For how we treat your data, see the privacy policy.

Who we write for

Our readers fall into two groups. Some are people trying to figure out an unknown call or text and want an honest account of what they can learn. Others have found their own number on a people-search site and want it gone. The first group is served by guides on free identification methods and reading a lookup report. The second is served by the guides on removal and prevention.

How we make money, and how we do not

We do not sell lookup reports, run ads or take payment for coverage. There are no affiliate links to lookup services in our articles. We do not have accounts, so we have no user data to sell, which is a statement about how the site is built rather than a boast.

What we will not publish

We do not publish the names of people tied to phone numbers, accusations against named companies based on complaint threads, or tips that help someone track a private person. We do not publish invented surveys, quotes or reader stories.