Spy Dialer

There are many legitimate reasons you may be looking into a service like Spy Dialer. You may be the victim of incessant prank calls or have missed a call from a mysterious number, for example. However, it’s important to exercise caution and consider the ethical implications of using this self-proclaimed tool for “sneaky people” and others like it. 

People search sites and reverse phone lookup services often have shady practices—whether in terms of the actual services they provide or their privacy and security practices.

Mariam Volobueva

What is Spy Dialer?

Spydialer is a free people search tool, founded by Robert Scott, that primarily focuses on reverse phone number lookups. The Spydialer website and app also offer email, address, and business lookup services, along with the option to “spy dial” numbers and listen to their voicemail recordings. 

If you want to remove your personal information from Spydialer, check out our opt-out guide for step-by-step instructions. 

How does Spy Dialer work?

The way Spy Dialer works is simple. They collect public data from federal, state, and local government agencies as well as other data brokers. Spy Dialer users can access this data via the company’s phone, people, address, email, and business lookup tool, via the website or mobile app.  

Below, we’ll go over each of the lookup options, how they work, and what they offer.

Free reverse phone lookup

The primary service Spy Dialer seems to advertise is their free reverse phone lookup and spy dial tool. To use this feature, you can enter any phone number, including landline and cell phone numbers, into the search bar and run a search. 

Once you do this, you’ll see the following options:

• Hear voicemail: Using one of their own spy dial numbers, Spy Dialer calls the number for you and lets you listen to and even download the voicemail recording. If the person you spy dialed calls this number back, they hear a recording letting them know they have been spy dialed. We tried this out ourselves and weren’t able to hear any recording, getting a notification instead saying there was no answer. 
• Name lookup: You can find out who the number belongs to, along with their approximate location, with this function. The results will show you a list of possible names associated with the number. This may include past and present owners of the phone number. 
• Photo lookup: Spy Dialer also lets you look up photos of the person the number may belong to. If they can’t find one, they’ll instead show you a photo of the center of town based on the number. Based on our tries, this is pretty accurate but doesn’t show the person’s address for privacy reasons. Instead, Spy Dialer links to BeenVerified and Black Book Online where you can view more details, including the person’s address. 
• Phone spam: Perhaps the most useful function, this lets you check if the number has been reported as belonging to a spammer by other users. You can see the score, letting you know how problematic the number may be. You also have the option to report the number as spam. 

People lookup

If you have a name, rather than a phone number, you can use this option to see the person’s:

• Partial address 
• Age 
• Photos
• Email address 
• Family members
• Neighbors
• Associates 
• Phone number
• Employment information.

While Spy Dialer doesn’t include full addresses and more sensitive information out of a professed concern for people’s privacy, the website does link to other people search sites such as BeenVerified where you can access far more information for a small price. 

Follow our opt-out guide to remove your personal information from BeenVerified.  

Address lookup

An address search will bring up a list of profiles of people who currently live or have lived at that address. By clicking “details,” you can view all of the information that the people lookup option provides. 

Again, while Spy Dialer claims to protect the privacy of individuals by not disclosing their full addresses, you can do the reverse and find out the identity and additional information of anyone living at a given address. 

Email lookup

This option will give you the identity of people that may be associated with an email address. Once you have a name, you can use a combination of the other tools Spy Dialer provides, as well as the links to other people search sites, to uncover more personal information. 

Business lookup

Spy Dialer also provides a business lookup tool—the least problematic of the services the site offers. This option gives you basic information regarding a business, including:

• Business name
• Address
• Phone numbers. 

Spy Dialer privacy and security

Privacy and security are significant concerns when it comes to people search sites like Spy Dialer . While the tool isn’t advertised for nefarious purposes, there’s nothing stopping criminals from using it to stalk, harass, or scam others. It is, after all, a tool for “sneaky people.” 

But these privacy and security concerns don’t only apply to the data subjects (the people whose data is being looked up). They also apply to the users of the service. 

Information Spy Dialer automatically collects when you visit the website

In their privacy policy, Spy Dialer admits that they “may also gather anonymous aggregate data for all visitors that does not personally identify you, but that may be helpful for marketing purposes or for improving the goods services [they] offer.”

Here’s the data they disclose collecting:

• IP addresses
• How long you are on the Site
• The pages you visit
• The results of actions you undertake
• Other information detailing your use of the Site.

While this may not seem like much, especially since it’s “anonymized” data, it can still increase your exposure to security and privacy risks. According to a 2019 study, 99.98% of Americans could be correctly re-identified using as few as 15 anonymized data points. 

Spy Dialer privacy practices

With that in mind, here are some of the most important privacy practices:

• Spy Dialer does not acknowledge Do Not Track (DNS) signals: California law requires websites to disclose whether they acknowledge DNS signals—or in other words whether they respect your request not to be tracked. Spy Dialer admits that they do not. 
• Third parties can acquire and track your personally identifiable information (PII) through the Spy Dialer website: California law also requires websites to disclose whether third parties can track PII through them. They admit that Google, Facebook, Yahoo, and Twitter can track you through their site. 
• Spy Dialer uses first- and third-party cookies, tracking code, and tracking pixels: They disclose using cookies, code, and pixels for purposes including functionality, analytics, and advertising. They also state that the information shared with third parties is beyond their control.  

Spy Dialer reviews

Amazon – 3.5 out of 5

Slashdot – 2.5 out of 5 

Sitejabber – 3 out of 5

Producthunt – 4.7 out of 5

Spy Dialer alternatives

There are hundreds of people search sites like Spydialer in the US. We don’t recommend using any people search sites as we believe this violates personal data privacy and can put your own privacy and security at risk. 

Some of the most popular Spydialer competitors include:

• Numlookup
• Anywho
• Thatsthem
• 411
• Beenverified
• Spokeo
• Whitepages.

Visit our data brokers page for the latest opt-out guides to remove your personal information from people search sites and data broker databases.