About TraceTone

TraceTone began with a week of calls that all showed my own area code, none of them from anyone I knew. I am Owen Hale, and I write and edit the site on my own. This page tells the story of how it got from that irritating week to what you are reading now, because I think the history explains the rules better than a list of them would.

The week of calls

I wanted a straight answer to a simple question: what does it mean when a call shows your own area code? I looked around, and the answers fell into two piles. One pile was vague enough to be useless. The other was so confident that I could not see how its authors could possibly know, with pages that promised to name the owner of any number or to show a caller's exact position. When the real answer turned out to be shorter than most of the explanations, I decided that was worth a site: the number begins a story about a call and does not finish it.

A plain text file

The first thing I built was not a page. It was a text file, with one line for every claim I wanted to make and, beside it, the page that supports it: a rule from the FCC or the FTC, the National Do Not Call Registry, the North American Numbering Plan Administrator, or the help page for a phone menu such as Settings > Phone > Silence Unknown Callers on an iPhone. I still keep it. When a carrier or a regulator changes a help page, I go back through the file, change what moved, and update the date shown on the article. When I cannot support a point, it gets a hedge ("usually", "often", "depends on your carrier") or it comes out. You will not find invented statistics, user counts or testimonials here, and that is a rule, not a coincidence.

The reader that says so little

Then came the number reader. It works from a list of North American area codes, and given a number it shows the region, the cities listed for the code, the time zone and a few warning signs, such as a toll-free or premium-rate code or an unusual pattern of digits. It does not identify the owner of a number, the carrier, the line type or any reputation. I do not hold those records, and I do not think an honest public site can produce them from ten digits. When the reader reaches the edge of what it knows, it says so, and then it points you toward the next sensible step.

Where it stands now

Today TraceTone is an independent information site. It has no connection with any phone carrier, government agency, people-search company or call-blocking app, and nobody pays to be mentioned. The articles take different shapes because the questions do: a checklist for moving a number, a set of scripts for strange texts, a glossary, an essay on international prefixes. The site needs no account and sets no cookies. It uses no analytics, advertising or third-party scripts or fonts, and it does not sell or share data. The ordinary web-server records that do exist are described in the privacy notice, and the rules for using the site are in the terms of service and the disclaimer.

There are things I will not do. I do not track phones, find people or help anyone locate a person who does not want to be found. I do not give legal advice and I do not rank spam numbers or keep a list of reported callers. If you are being harassed or threatened, contact the local police and ask your carrier about blocking and reporting. For scams, ReportFraud.ftc.gov is the place to file.

Phone rules and carrier features change, and I will get things wrong. If you find a page that is out of date, write through the contact page and tell me which page and what you saw. I make corrections as soon as I have checked them and update the date on the page, and when a change is significant I say so in the text instead of quietly editing. You can read more about me on the author page.

The site at a glance

Who runs it: One editor, Owen Hale.
Affiliations: None with carriers, agencies, people-search companies or call-blocking apps.
Checked against: The FCC, the FTC, the Do Not Call Registry, the numbering plan administrator and phone makers' help pages.
The reader shows: Region, listed cities, time zone and warning signs for an area code.
The reader never shows: Owner, carrier, line type, reputation or where a phone is now.
Corrections: Through the contact page, answered first.