How We Source, Verify and Refresh Our Data

Last reviewed: 25 September 2026

A lookup result is only as good as the data behind it and how recently it was checked. This page says, signal by signal, where each answer comes from, how we keep it current, and what we have chosen not to publish at all.

Where each signal comes from

• Federal DNC status - National Do Not Call Registry status supplied through compliance data providers' registry feeds.
• State DNC status - the state-operated do-not-call lists, for states that maintain one. States without a separate registry return no state result rather than a copy of the federal one.
• TCPA litigator status - a match of the number against a corpus of Telephone Consumer Protection Act plaintiffs compiled from court records and compliance data providers. A match is reported as possible or confirmed depending on how the number was linked to the case.
• Litigator by owner - the same corpus, matched against the potential owners of the number rather than the number itself, so a recycled or secondary number does not hide a known plaintiff.
• Blacklist status - caller suppression lists maintained by compliance data providers, which record numbers that have complained, threatened, asked not to be called, or been reported by other callers.
• Owner records - name, age, addresses and relatives compiled from publicly available and commercially available records.

We name sources at the category level. Where a data agreement permits naming the provider we will; where it does not, we say so rather than imply a source we cannot disclose.

How we keep each signal current

• Litigator - clean result: a number that came back clean is re-checked against the corpus regularly, because plaintiffs are added continually.
• Litigator - positive match: positive matches are re-verified periodically. A litigation record does not become untrue quickly, so these are held longer than clean results before being looked at again.
• Litigator name index: rebuilt from the case corpus frequently, so new cases reach name matching promptly.
• Blacklist: refreshed regularly from the suppression sources.
• Federal and state DNC - number found on a registry: a positive registry hit is re-verified periodically.
• Federal and state DNC - number not found: a clean DNC answer is re-checked on every lookup rather than served from an older record, because a number can be added to a registry at any time.
• Number metadata (registered state, line type): refreshed regularly.
• Owner records: refreshed as our record sources deliver updates.

What we deliberately do not publish

• No owner name, age, address or relative appears on any page a search engine can index. Personal records exist only inside an interactive result.
• No page exists for an individual phone number, prefix or person, and no "most reported" lists. A phone number is personal information; we do not build pages around it.
• No bulk export, batch upload or download of registry or litigator status. Per-number DNC status is licensed compliance data and is shown one number at a time to the person who submitted it.
• No page labels a named individual a litigator. Name-search results are worded as a record match and explain the possible/confirmed distinction.

What we do not cover

• The FCC Reassigned Numbers Database. A clean result here does not tell you a number has not changed hands since a consent was obtained.
• Safe-harbor documentation. We do not produce or retain the scrub logs, written procedures or training records that the TSR safe harbor requires of a seller.
• Carrier spam-label reputation (the "Scam Likely" style labels applied by carriers and analytics services). That is a different system with different inputs.
• Anything outside the United States.

Known limitations

• Numbers are recycled. A number can pass from a plaintiff to an unrelated person, or the reverse, between two of our checks.
• Names are common. Owner matching and litigator-by-owner matching can associate a number with the wrong person of the same name; that is why by-owner matches are shown separately and worded as potential.
• Registries lag. A number added to the National Registry today may take some time to be reflected in registry data under the FTC's own compliance timetable.
• Sources disagree. Where a compliance provider and a court record conflict, we show the more conservative (flagged) status and note the source category.

Report an error, correct a record, or remove one

If a result is wrong, tell us. Our opt-out and data removal page covers removal of your own details and correction of a wrong litigator or blacklist match. Every request is logged for review and verified by a person before anything is changed. For everything else, contact us or write to support@uspeoplesearch.net.

US People Search is not a consumer reporting agency under the FCRA. This page describes how our data is assembled; it is not legal advice and a lookup result does not create a safe harbor under any statute.