Tracking the owner of a private number

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Palerider

Registered User
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Over the past four weeks my 15 year old who is on Meteor has been receiving calls from a private number, at first he dealt with it ok, now he answers and hangs up but it is getting messier with call frequency increasing probably because of the school holidays. I was told about it today and asked him to look up his phone and we wrote down all call times from this private number over the last three days, in total there were 26, the most recent I answered a few moments ago, they hung up on me.

Is it possible for his phone provider to track down who is making these nuisance calls hiding behind a private number, I have to say I take this quite seriously.

Apart from using a whistle each time he takes a call from this private number has anybody any ideas on tracing the maker/s of these nuisance calls, I don't see this as an issue for the Garda...yet anyway.
 
Simple, ignore the calls and turn the phone off at night to prevent disturbances.

If it keep going ditch the sim card and get a new number

if it is private number lot a whole lot can be done to track it
 
Call Meteor and report it.

A person can hide a private number from you, but they can't hide it from the network they are calling. If you report it to meteor, they wont tell you the phone number but they can log the details themselves and if the Gardai ever want it meteor can share with them.

Also I would think it is serious enough to report it to the Gardai. Someone is trying to harrass your teenager, if they get bored of it, they might try messaging.

It might just be another 15 year old crushing on yours and wanting to hear his voice but maybe it is meaner than that, the Gardai can offer advice too on how to handle. Plus if it does escalate to messages or other things, you have the record of how long it has been going on.
 
I just found this out recently and if you have a smartphone it will work.
Download 'Hullomail' - It's a voicemail app that uses your data rather than having to call voicemail as some providers (Three in particular) charge for calls to voicemail but give unlimited data.

Anyway, download it, set it up etc and it takes over from your regular voicemail.

Now the next time the annoying call comes in, DO NOTHING.
Let the call go to voicemail.
Once the call is handed over to Hullomail, the 'Private Number' that rang you displays its number to Hullomail, which then shows it to you as a missed call.

Dunno if this is a bug in Hullomail which will be fixed, but it currently works so you can use it and get the number of the idiot annoying you.
 
Palerider said:
Apart from using a whistle each time he takes a call from this private number has anybody any ideas on tracing the maker/s of these nuisance calls, I don't see this as an issue for the Garda...yet anyway.
Click to expand...

AFAIK it's only through an official complaint to the guards that they will trace the number.
 
You could also answer the call and just leave it sitting on the counter top but don't listen. Let them waste their credit or run up their bill !
 
Some phones have an automatic reject function from private numbers.
 
Get a male (perhaps a female would have the same effect, I dont know) to answer the answer the call saying "Hello Garda Station". Aware of someone who had nuisance calls and this trick worked, line went dead immediately and no more calls.
 

Sorry, but that's rubbish.

To the op, report it to the garda, don't let it continue
 
If it is an unregistered number there won't be a lot the police can do.
 
This guy could be super cautious by always topping up in cash and never uses supermarket loyalty cards to track his purchases. Not using GPS or apps also helps.

Apart from narrowing him down to an area the radius of 3 miles from a mast, there is not much they can do.
 
Most kids register their phones with their provider to get extra call credit, a friendly Garda told me this and says in most cases the owner of the phone can be traced with the help of the provider which is given in all cases in which a complaint is made to the Garda, it does not have to be threatening either.

I answered his phone one night to another one of these private numbers I guess about a couple of weeks back and told the caller their number was tracable and if they called again I would ensure the Garda followed up, there has been no further calls, problem solved.
 

Your getting very cloak and daggerish i doubt very much the user is being that secretive, and in any case accurate location tracking without use of gps is a lot more accurate than you would think!
 
Years ago this happened my son with text messages. I did go to Guards who said they could not do anything as it was Private Number but told me to turn off phone for two weeks which I did. Now I dont know what happened after that but the messags stopped.,,,,,so I guess they were able to do something after all.
 
Switching to a phone that can reject these private numbers seems a good option. (and reporting it too)

Some info here.

[broken link removed]
 

Your phone number is sent with a text even if you have the setting to withhold number.
 
Palerider said:
Most kids register their phones with their provider to get extra call credit
Click to expand...

Only mentioned to Vodafone the other day about registration credit and they said that this is a thing of the past with all the companies these days.
 
athens2004 said:
I did go to Guards who said they could not do anything as it was Private Number...
Click to expand...

They generally don't want to, but all phone calls are traceable. It'll generally require a court order to the phone companies to retrieve their records, but they will have the information. Their billing systems depend on it!
 
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