Transparency is core to our mission. This page explains exactly where our phone number information comes from and how we process it.
Source: Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
Update Frequency: Daily (automated sync)
Data Included: Phone numbers that have received complaints to the FTC's Do Not Call Registry, including complaint counts and reported scam categories.
Verification: This is official government data. Numbers flagged by the FTC have been reported directly to a federal agency by consumers.
Source: Phoneya-operated research numbers that receive unsolicited inbound calls
Update Frequency: Calls are screened in real time; observations appear only after human review
Data Included: A concise summary of what the caller said and requested, the call category and outcome, the caller's claimed organization, and indicators such as automation or requests for money or sensitive information.
How it is verified: An AI call screener conducts the conversation and produces a structured observation. A person reviews and may correct that observation before choosing whether to publish it. Calls never publish automatically.
Privacy: Phoneya does not record call audio. Raw transcripts and technical event data stay private and are scrubbed or deleted after 30 days.
Our public sensor network currently includes research lines in Jackson, Mississippi and Oceanside, California.
Important: A sensor observation records what a caller claimed during one call. It is not independent proof that the claim was true or that every future call from the same number has the same purpose.
Source: User-submitted reports from Phoneya visitors
Update Frequency: Real-time submissions, screened before publication
Data Included: Caller type classification (scam, telemarketer, legitimate), call descriptions, robocall indicators, and user experiences.
Verification: Every report is screened before publication. Screening removes contact details and abuse, and holds anything borderline — including submissions that name private individuals — for a person to review before it can appear.
Important: Community reports are user-submitted and may not be verified. We display them to help users make informed decisions, but they should not be considered definitive proof of a caller's intent.
Source: Eyecon caller-ID network, accessed through a third-party API
Update Frequency: Fetched once per number when someone looks it up, then cached
Data Included: The name that other people in the Eyecon network have saved a number under. We request names only. We do not request, store, or display profile photos.
Verification: None. These names come from strangers' address books, not from the phone company or the number's owner. They are frequently outdated, and a name can be missing, wrong, or belong to a previous holder of the number.
Important: A caller name shown on Phoneya is not evidence that a number is a scam, and is not confirmation of anyone's identity. If a name associated with your number appears here, you can have it removed using the "Request Removal" option on that number's page.
Source: North American Numbering Plan Administration (NANPA)
Data Included: Area code geographic assignments, number format validation, toll-free number identification.
Verification: This is standardized telecommunications data maintained by the official numbering plan administrator.
Source: Our own site traffic
Data Included: How many distinct visitors looked up a number in the past hour, 24 hours, and 7 days, and whether that rate is unusually high compared with the same number's own 7-day average.
How it is counted: We count people, not page views. Each visitor is counted once per number using a random session identifier and a hashed IP address, repeat views within a short window are ignored, and automated traffic from bots and crawlers is excluded. A "sudden increase" is only shown when several different visitors on several different networks look a number up in the same hour, so one person reloading a page cannot create one.
What it means: A spike in lookups often indicates an active calling campaign, because people search for a number right after being called by it. It is a signal of attention, not proof of wrongdoing — treat it alongside the FTC and FCC complaint data rather than on its own. We store no raw IP addresses for this purpose and delete individual records after 30 days.
We prioritize keeping our data current:
If you have questions about our data sources or believe information about a number is incorrect, please use the "Request Removal" option on any number page, or read our Editorial Policy for more details.
