Did you know that there is in the United States a single site that you can go to and search cellphone numbers and who belongs to them?
Me neither, at least until I was searching for something on a related post I am working on for which I was searching for the number of cellphones in Canada. The search lead me to an interesting article by Gary Thompson that was originally written in April 2008.
In the post Gary talked about the fact that he had discovered that there was a national cell phone number registry where you can look up cellphone numbers and from there access public and vital records.
Whaat I found even more interesting than this was the fact that the registry, the National Cell Phone Registry , is run by Complete Investigation Service which proclaims
CIS Worldwide Online gives you instant access to the world’s largest database of public and private records from around the world conveniently at your fingertips.
The cellphone registry is only a portion of their services being offered
- Cell Phone Registry – Lookup someone’s cell phone number with North America’s largest cell phone number directory and reverse cell phone lookup.
- County Registry – Search county, state, and national public records online.
- Person Reports – Get instant background checks and locate lost people.
- Public Divorce Records – Search national public divorce records database.
- Public Marriage Records – Search public marriage records and marriage licenses.
- Search Birth Record – Search birth records and access public life records.
- Search Death Record – Search death records through national public records.
- Unclaimed Money USA – Find unclaimed money in the United States that you are entitled to recieve.
Just out of curiosity I plugged in my name which being a Canadian citizen shouldn’t show much however it seems that my name may be more popular than I thought
So obviously the next question was – what do they know about all these different versions of me? Well that will cost money it seems
While I am not overly surprised that there is indeed a national cellphone number registry what bothers me is that it is owned by a private company and connected to other databases that have our personal information being made available so easily.
It seems that everyone from Facebook to private investigation firms are making money off of our information – everyone but us that is.
