Have you ever wished you could somehow check who your kids are talking to and when? Would you like to know if these people are potentially damaging your future? You’re not alone.
In a super connected society, millions of parents want the same thing. And their wishes are not entirely in vain. With the increased connectivity that technology brings, it has also brought almost Orwellian methods of controlling people. Cell phones can be used as GPS devices to see if teens are where they say they’ve been, digital conversations can be recorded in their entirety, and even the government is on board with its DARPA Total Information Awareness program sponsored by our tax department. . dollars a few years ago.
All 1984 nightmares aside, we have a variety of reasons to keep track of our children. We may want:
- Make sure they’re not talking to drug dealers.
- Make sure they are not talking to peers with a negative influence
- Make sure they adhere to the grounding periods (grounding might be a bad idea anyway, but that’s a different topic)
- Don’t be attracted to strangers or even sex offenders.
- Do not make long distance calls to foreign countries.
- don’t joke with anyone
So how can we do this? It basically starts with identifying the people you are talking to. Using the call history on their cell phones, we can keep track of all the phone numbers they are dialing. In the event that they may be erasing some numbers from your phone history, we can have the phone company keep track of the numbers dialed on the bill (Nice try, kids). Once we have these numbers, it’s simply a matter of running a reverse phone lookup to find the owner’s name, address, and background.
Reverse search using free websites
We can start our search on the free websites. There’s no point in paying for something if you don’t need it, right? A search engine can bring you many online phone books, although most are very similar. These are simply the online versions of the printed book you used to receive in the mail. Just enter your number and see the results. If you only get the carrier and phone type, it’s probably a cell phone, even if it says “landline.” This information is often inaccurate as mobile phones cannot be publicly listed.
Additional options to this phone book include typing the number directly into a search engine or on free social networking sites (MySpace, pipl, facebook, etc.). The number can be reported by a community if it’s a common problem, or friends can include their contact information in online hangouts.
Using a reverse business phone book
A better option to ensure accurate results when tracking your child’s friends is to use a commercial ‘reverse phone book’. These sites list 98% of all phone numbers and get their information from public records. You can get someone’s name, address with satellite maps, background information, criminal records, etc. Obviously, it’s enough to find out if a stranger is a potential perpetrator, or if a teenager has been caught dealing or DWI/DUI.
Seek out and destroy troublesome friends for the benefit of your future
Armed with your identifying information, create a profile of your child’s friends and keep it in a safe place. You can then compare your child’s behavior after ‘hanging out’ with certain friends to the information on her list and see if those friends are potentially negative for him or her. If so, nix ’em. Help your child or teen find new friends who are a more positive influence, or develop their inner character so they can naturally avoid negative people more easily in the future.