What if you just received a call from an unknown Brazilian number, and you want to find out who they are? Fortunately, this guide covers eight effective methods to find out who owns a cell phone number immediately. You’ll love that these methods are entirely legal, verified, and work within Brazil’s privacy regulations. Let’s explore the most dependable ways to carry out a reverse phone number search in Brazil to verify or validate any unfamiliar phone number.
Why Do I Need to Find Out Who Owns a Cell Phone Number in Brazil?
Not knowing who owns a cellphone number in Brazil leaves you vulnerable. For instance, scammers can exploit that uncertainty, while you could also miss essential calls. Here are the different reasons why you need to look up a cell phone number:
- Fraud prevention: Finding who’s behind a suspicious call helps you avoid scams, spam, and phishing attempts.
- Business verifications: It can help you confirm your clients or partners’ identity to make sure you’re partaking in legitimate transactions. This is vital, especially when dealing with remote or unfamiliar contacts.
- Personal safety: You can identify anyone who has been harassing you, which can be important considering Brazil’s high rate of phone-related crimes, such as SIM card fraud.
- Reconnect lost contacts: When you look up a phone number, you can identify if it belongs to a childhood friend, colleague, or family member.
- Legal or debt collection: It helps businesses track overdue payments or resolve disputes associated with a specific account number.
- Parental monitoring: Parents can identify who has been contacting their children to ensure their safety.
How to Find Out Who Owns a Cell Phone Number in Brazil: 8 Legal Methods
Now you know all the reasons why you should confirm who the owner of that unfamiliar phone number is. Let’s look at all the tools, techniques, and approaches to do just that.
Method 1: Direct Inquiry (When Possible)
The simplest way you can identify a cell phone number owner is by asking them directly. This method avoids privacy concerns and is decent for known contacts. However, note that direct inquiry does not always work for unknown or suspicious callers. It can even be dangerous to call scammers who can use social engineering tactics to manipulate you into giving them your sensitive data.
👉How to do it
- Call or message the number politely and ask them who they are.
- With the details they share, you could check their website or social media for more information.
🔍What you might find
Depending on their relationship with you, they might be willing to give their full name, business identity, and more.
Method 2: Reverse Phone Number Lookup
Reverse phone lookup tools provide dedicated channels to find all available information about the person associated with a specific phone number. These tools, such as MLocator, scan public databases for valuable insights to help you make informed decisions about that phone number.
👉How to do it
- Visit MLocator’s reverse lookup page.
- Enter a Brazilian phone number, including the country and area code.
- Click the search button.
- Once MLocator finds the information, you’ll get a prompt. Next, tap on “Unlock All Results.”
- Finally, enter your email address and click the “Next” button.
🔍What you might find
MLocator will identify the cell phone number owner, including their first and last name, phone carrier information, possible city or region, social media profiles, email address, and more.
Method 3: Utilize WhatsApp
WhatsApp is widely used in Brazil, and people frequently share personal details about themselves on the platform. Hence, add the phone number to your contact list and check the WhatsApp details for that phone number.
👉How to do it
- Launch WhatsApp and tap the plus button at the top.
- Next, click on “New contact”
- Enter the phone number and details, and click “Ok” to save.
- Go to the phone contact on WhatsApp.
- Look at their profile, especially the name, photo, and “about” status.
🔍What you might find
You may find their real name, if they’ve set it before. You’ll see their profile picture, last seen status and business details if they use WhatsApp Business.
Method 4: Search Social Media & Google
Many Brazilians have their phone numbers published on their social media accounts. So, you can check these places and even Google to uncover their accounts.
👉How to do it
- On Google: Type the phone number in quotes to find listings.
- On Facebook or LinkedIn: go to the search bar and type in the phone number first without the country code, and then with the country code.
- Also, consider adding the phone number to your contact list, so that Facebook might suggest it to you.
🔍What you might find
You may find the owner’s full name, business account details, social media profiles and more. This method only works if they’ve not made their social media pages private.
Method 5: Use Public Phone Number Directory Websites
Brazil has several public directories. They include Telelistas.net, and Lista Amarela. These websites also list landlines and mobile numbers, and can help with your reverse phone search.
👉How to do it
- Visit the directory Telelistas.net. Enter the phone number with its Brazilian country code and area code. Check listings that appear.
- Next, go to Lista Amarela. Enter the phone number with its Brazilian country code and area code. Browse through the results.
🔍What you might find
Searching on these websites will help you identify the cell phone number’s owner. You’ll also find the owner’s full name, their alternate phone numbers, details about their businesses, and other information that can help.
Method 6: Try a PIX Key Lookup
PIX is Brazil’s instant payment system developed by the Central Bank of Brazil. It’s a payment method that identifies a checking account and enables transactions to be completed in under 10 seconds. Typically, Brazilians create PIX keys using either their email address, cell phone number, a random combination of numbers, letters, or symbols, or their CPF or CNPJ. When they give you this PIX key, it helps you quickly find their beneficiary account and personal data instead of entering those details manually. Hence, you could use their PIX key for your reverse phone lookup.
👉How to do it
- Ask your caller for their PIX key.
- Now open any of your banking apps (e.g, Nubank, Banco do Brasil).
- Navigate to the section for “Send via PIX” and enter their PIX key.
- If registered, the app would display the account holder’s name and other details.
🔍What you might find
Using this reverse phone search method will find their name and business details.
Method 7: Use a Caller ID App
Caller ID apps are also great for reverse phone lookup. Through their connections to public crowdsourced databases, you can quickly identify phone numbers connected to scams or fraudulent businesses. Whoscall is a fine example and very popular in Brazil. This tool helps you identify any Brazilian phone numbers associated with previous scams or spam incidents.
👉How to do it
- Download and run the Whoscall app on Android or IOS.
- Next, enable permissions and access to contacts and logs. On IOS, go to “Phone” followed by enabling “Call Blocking & Identification”
- Now go to the homepage.
- Tap the second button at the bottom of the page.
- Enter phone number in search bar. Click the Enter key.
- You’ll find results like “Telemarketing” or “Scam Likely” if linked to spam or scam incidents, respectively.
🔍What you might find
You will find caller type and user-reported tags, such as ‘fraudulent’ and ‘spam’, among others. However, free versions will lack details.
Method 8: Check Official ANATEL Resources (Operator & DDD Information)
Brazil’s Agencia Nacional de Telecomunicacoes (ANATEL) can help you find who’s behind that phone number. However, this method does not disclose personal user details. It’s meant to verify information about businesses and the identities behind them.
👉How to do it
- Go to ANATEL’s “Qual Empresa Me Ligou” or “Which Company Called Me” page.
- There, you can enter the phone number and access the information you want.
🔍What you might find
You’ll find information about the mobile carrier, the business associated with that phone number, the geographical region or location of the company, and the number portability status.
Risky and Illegal Methods to Avoid When Checking Phone Number Owners in Brazil
Using legal and efficient reverse phone lookup tools, like we’ve talked about, is safer. You can also avoid all forms of privacy violations and stay within the law. However, people often also use some questionable tactics to find out information about who’s behind a phone number. Knowing this can equally help you protect your personal information as well:
- Hacking/Phishing: People can send fraudulent or spoofed websites to you, tricking you into revealing personal data.
- Bribing telecom employees: Malicious actors may pay insiders for private customer information.
- Using spyware/stalkerware: People can send spyware to your phone, which, when installed, places tracking apps within your device.
- SIM Swap fraud: This is a common scam in Brazil, involving the unauthorised cloning of a phone number. Under Brazilian law, this constitutes identity theft.
- Purchasing leaked data from scam hackers: Malicious actors also acquire phone records about others.
- Impersonation: It’s also possible for malicious actors to impersonate authorities to extract information. Note that this is a federal crime.
Always remember that Brazil’s General Data Protection Law (LGPD) imposes fines and jail time for privacy violations. Therefore, it’s essential to respect the LGPD and privacy by always using lawful and transparent methods when researching phone numbers.
FAQ
How to know where the phone number is from?
You can first check the DDD (area code) of the phone number to determine its city or region. Brazilian phone numbers follow the format +55 (DDD) XXXX-XXXX. That said, you can also use Google search, social media platforms like Facebook, to equally find the phone number’s owner. Alternatively, websites like MLocator offer dedicated reverse phone search features to streamline your approach.
How can I find out who a +55 number belongs to?
To identify the owner of a Brazilian phone number (+55), try MLocator. You can also save the phone number to your contact list and check WhatsApp or Facebook syncs. Searching on social media or Google can equally help the process. However, your results will depend on how private the information is.
How to know a person’s name by mobile number?
You can find out the name of the person by cell phone number using multiple tools. This includes caller ID apps like Whoscall, reverse phone lookup services like MLocator and searching on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.
How to know who owns a landline phone number?
Landline phone numbers are easier to trace in Brazil than mobile phone numbers. Start your search using public directories like Telelistas.net and Lista Amera. You can also use Google search since many businesses list their landlines there. If it’s a business line, your network operator can also assist you with confirming the identity of that business.
Is there a way to know who owns a WhatsApp number?
Yes, you can always check by saving the phone number to your contact list and then launching the WhatsApp app to see their name and photo. Check out this guide on WhatsApp number lookup to access all the details about how to perform an effective and thorough search using the platform.
Wrap Up
Throughout this article, we’ve talked about all the best ways to find out the owner of any cell phone number in Brazil. For Brazilians, trying to identify the cell phone number owner can protect you from dealing with spammers or scammers. That said, you should always try multiple tools to build a complete and robust picture of whoever is behind that phone number. That way, you have more control over your communication and ultimately your private life.
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