Q: How do I get a telephone number for a family member? I live in another county that does not list Harford County, Md., telephone numbers and my address book was lost in the move, so I am having real problems since I cannot contact my sons and other family members and friends. ~ Elaine Dodd
Tech+ Elaine, you’ve got to go online. Force yourself to explore the internet, use Google or Bing to search and even consider voice-activated options like Amazon’s Alexa. While you could try dialing 411, which still provides directory assistance for a fee, the old way of life is not coming back.
Of course, hunting for a person’s phone number is a bit challenging online with the wealth of information out there. That’s where I can help guide you. If typing in that person’s name and city doesn’t pull up the person, there are more strategic ways to find a number.
In Maryland’s Harford County, Verizon is the local telephone service provider, according to the . And by searching for “Verizon 411 directory,” that brings us to , which — to all the younger folks out there — was the best way to look up residential phone numbers last century.
Verizon’s white pages — at — take me to, a massive resource of phone numbers. I wrote about Dexpages before because CenturyLink, Denver’s major telephone service, also provides its customer data to them. Read deeper into how your phone number gets into Dexpages from this earlier Tech+ Q&A: The most accurate way to find a person’s phone number and home address? The phone book.
At Dexpages, you can search for people nationwide by ZIP code to pull up the actual printed white page. There are caveats to this. The person must have landline telephone service with one of the major providers (CenturyLink or Verizon, for example). Mobile services aren’t as willing to sell such customer data. And the person must not have paid to be unlisted. These days you may find more people missing from these once-useful white pages because fewer people pay for landline service.
Using these resources will get you closer to finding the phone numbers of family members. But hopefully your sons have been keeping tabs on you so they know how to reach you themselves — and already have.
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