Reverse searching private subscriber phone numbers has been a contentious issue since DTMS Marketing lost a copyright case initiated by Telstra a few years ago.
Since then, several people published more or less replicas of the DTMS phone CD. They came and they went as soon as they were discovered selling what was largely old pre-court judgment stuff under the guise it was new data.
In more recent times some websites have started offering reverse phone searching online for a fee or selling data CDs compiled from, supposedly, a variety of sources and "washed" against other public data.
Earlier this year Telstra and Sensis have lost an action in the Federal Court of Australia seeking to protect their claimed copyright in White Pages and Yellow Pages. An appeal in the High Court is pending. This has presented a window of opportunity for several people/businesses to start selling phone data purportedly derived from the same data that is used by Telstra and Sensis, meaning, it's supposed to be genuinely up to date and complete.
The other day we received an introduction to a new site - http://reversephones.com.au - which provides FREE online reverse phone searches and other searches based on subscriber criteria. I think this is very interesting, particularly as some sites such as http://yell123.com/ are selling what seems to be the same data on CD. In the case of Yell123 at the princely sum of $449.
Why would one pay for it if you can get it free? Indeed, reversephones.com.au is providing free downloads of a "CLI app" and is generally helpful to users.
Whilst I remain concerned about the ethics and privacy surrounding the provision of data that can be reverse searched, I am a realist and at least want to publicise the offer of FREE versus buying expensive databases.
Of course if Telstra's appeal of the judgement in the near future succeeds, all those providing phone data are probably back to square one, such as it was when DTMS lost Telstra.
Michael Hessenthaler
Reverse phone searches, also known as Reverse phone lookup in the United States, are NOT AVAILABLE in Australia.
It is not lawful to carry out such searches for Australian phone numbers.
Beware of anyone offering such reverse phone search service for Australian phone numbers because you will find they are using pre-2001 phone databases. You'll pay for a search to be told: "no sorry, not listed" or similar. How do you prove you were cheated?
If you know of any other relevant services or resources anywhere in the world, please share it with others by emailing us at .
