Real or fake number  or texts from unfamiliar phone numbers. If the number has a country code that doesn’t align with any known locations, or if it’s not listed in your contacts, it might be a scam or a fake number. This article provides some tips to help you determine if a number is real or fake.

The first thing you should do is cross-check the number with a few different sources. Using multiple online directories, search engines and social media platforms can increase the likelihood of discovering the truth about a phone number. If the information provided by multiple sources is consistent, it’s a good indication that the phone number is valid and the caller is legitimate.

Cracking the Code: How to Verify Whether a Number is Real or Fake

You should also save the phone numbers of friends, family and businesses you patronize in your device’s address book. This will cut down on the number of unknown calls that ring through to your voicemail. If you’re still worried about the possibility of being a target for phone fraud, you can use a trusted third-party app that will let you know whether or not a call or text is from a friend.

However, phone numbers were invented to route calls and were never intended as a method of identifying callers. Even if you Google a number, that won’t help you tell if it’s real or fake because the information provided on Google is unreliable and will often return inaccurate results.