How to Obtain Cellular Phone Records

Most people rely heavily on their cellular phones. It’s likely that you can't always remember every phone call that you make, but you may need a record for billing or legal purposes. Your cellular phone record is a listing of all your incoming and outgoing phone calls. When you need to obtain cellular phone records for yourself or someone else, there are a few methods that you can use.

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How to Get Phone Records

By contacting your service provider and requesting your records, you should be able to get all of the information that you need. It's more challenging to get phone records for accounts that you don't own than it is to get your own cellular phone records. This makes sense because any accounts where you're the owner come with certain legal rights. However, there are still ways to legally obtain cellular phone records from lines that you don't own.

If you need to find a number that's calling you, however, you may have to contact your service provider. If a call is coming in from an unidentified number, you can contact your service provider and ask that they set a “trap” for you. You'll have to explain that you're being harassed either from constant robocalls or by a particular number. Your provider can then identify all of the numbers that are contacting you.

Accessing Phone Records Online

When you're trying to get your own phone records, the easiest way may be to simply log into your online account. Depending on your service provider, the location of these records may be slightly different, but they can typically be found by looking at your bill online. Depending on your provider, you'll either need to look at “call history” or “activity record.” You can usually go back more than one billing cycle in your billing menu.

How to Get Call Logs

There are many different services that will allow you to retain your call logs for various time frames; typically, these time frames are 30 days. These logs aren't any different than a detailed phone record. They don't record calls, but rather maintain technical data like duration of calls, the times calls were made and what number made the call.

How to Get Tracfone Records

When you have a Tracfone, getting your cellular records can be a bit more difficult than getting records from a standard service provider. First, you'll need to contact the services department at 1-800-867-7183. You'll need to speak with customer service and let them know that you require detailed call records. After that, follow their instructions to access your account records. Sometimes this will require faxing or mailing a certified note proving your identity and authorizing the account representative to send you your Tracfone call log.

How to Get a Tracfone

Tracfone is a prepaid phone service available in the United States, the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico. Because the service is prepaid, it will work with any phone, provided you have the correct SIM card. The steps to get and activate a Tracfone cell are simple:

• Buy a phone from Tracfone or another company.
• Sign in and activate your account on their website.
• Get your SIM card from Tracfone and install it in your phone.
• Pay for your minutes and activate your phone.

You can purchase phones, add time and even change your number right from the Tracfone website. Area codes can be changed up to four times a year, numbers can be changed and you can add minutes to get more time on your phone from the site. When you need to add minutes, the transaction will go through in real time and there will be no waiting period to use your phone.