A Script to Find UK Telephone Numbers

Even with CallerID there are often times when you don’t recognize a phone number. And, at this time of year, the phone never seems to stop ringing. Searching on Google for a number often brings up a web page that lists the number and so provides a clue as to who the caller might be if they didn’t leave a message. Reverse phone look up would be the answer, of course.

Unfortunately, there is no standard way of citing a phone number, you might see (808) 123 5678 or 808-123-5678, (808)-123 5678, 808 1235678 or at least a couple of other variations on the theme. Rather than having to enter each variation to do the search a simple Google search string would be very useful:

"(808) 123 5678" OR "808-123-5678" OR "(808)-123 5678" OR "808 1235678"

A similar situation arises in the UK where number formats vary considerably, especially as British Telecom adds new exchanges and seems to change everyone’s number almost on an annual basis. But, how would you enter all those variations automatically? Well, I’m hoping someone will have written a neat little Javascript that creates the appropriate string for you and does a multi search on your favourite search engine. Or, maybe there is a web site that does it for you. Of course, access to a phone number lookup in reverse would be so much easier, but comes with rather a lot of data protection and personal privacy issues.