Telephone is a great convenience to our lives, but it can also be taken advantage of by scammers to scam money from us. Scammers can come up with thousands of ways to trick people into falling for their phne scams. If you suspect that you have received a fraudulent call, in addition to hanging up the phone and call-blocking the number, one of the right things to do is report the scam number.

In this post, you’ll learn more about phone phishing scams and how to report them to authorities to help protect others from phone scams.

About phone scams 

Phone scams can take many different forms. Some may make you feel helpful and friendly while others may try to threaten you and put you under lots of pressure. No matter which method they use, their ultimate goal is to get you to pay for something or to obtain your personal information in order to commit identity theft. 

Here are the most common examples of phone scams:

• “Free” trials
• Loan scams
• Charity scams
• Prize and lottery scams
• Business imposter scams
• Business and investment scams
• Debt relief and credit repair scams

Regardless of how many various sorts of phone scams exist, it is always better to avoid answering an unknown phone call. However, if you are concerned about missing important calls, you can perform a reverse phone number lookup to determine whether the number is a scam call or not.

Run a reverse phone lookup to check unknown numbers

Reverse phone number lookup is a kind of service that can help you gather a lot of information associated with a phone number, including the owner’s name, age, phone type, address history, social media profiles, email addresses, and more. So, if you’re not sure who a call is from or just want to reveal a phone scammer’s information, you can always perform a phone number lookup.

Here are some of the dedicated phone number lookup tools we recommend:

Option 1: Intelius

Intelius is well-known for providing fast and reliable phone number lookups with access to millions of available public record sources. It’s a great option for you to verify unknown phone numbers.

1. Go to the Intelius phone number lookup search page.
   
2. Input the number in the search box and click SEARCH.

3 ) Then wait as Intelius searches its public record sources for you. Once it locates a match, it will provide a confidential report that could uncover the information you might need to know about the owner. In order to view the report, you will need to purchase the membership plan that best suits your needs.

^{Sample Report}

Option 2: BeenVerified 

BeenVerified is also an effective and powerful reverse phone lookup tool. It can search billions of data points using the number you enter to find mystery numbers, even if they are unpublished or unlisted.

1. Head to BeenVerified.
   
2. Enter the number you want to search and then click SEARCH.

3 ) BeenVerified will compile a detailed report for you if it finds the number’s owner in the database. After that, you can look over all of the available information about the scam callers. 

Option 3: PeopleLooker

PeopleLooker is a popular, user-friendly phone number search tool that might also help you check who owns unknown numbers. 

1. Go to the PeopleLooker Official Website.
2. Type the phone number in the search box, then hit Search.
   
3. Sit tight while PeopleLooker collects data and records that match your search. You can browse each profile by selecting different names if there are several potential phone owners.
   

How to report a scam phone number

· Report to your local government & local police 

If you suspect a phone number belongs to a scammer, you can start by reporting it to the state consumer protection office. If you have lost money through the scam phone, you should also report it to your local police station.

· Report to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) is the main government agency in the United States that accepts and handles complaints about most common scams such as phone calls, emails, computer support scams and so on. You can report the scams either online or by phone:

• Online: ReportFraud.ftc.gov
• Phone: 1-877-382-4357 (9:00 AM – 8:00 PM, ET)

_{*Features photo by Tara Winstead}

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