Telephone exchanges

There are two things in your telephone number that may give people a clue as to where you live. Though you might not have thought about it, your area code and your prefix, otherwise known as your telephone exchanges, were put together to be able to identify the origin of a number and to be sure that there are enough numbers for everyone in any one calling area. This might seem a little confusing, and a little like an invasion of privacy.

Local exchanges

When it comes to your home phone service, you are going to have the traditional telephone exchanges that you have always had while living there. Some small towns only have one prefix, so you already know what that will be. However, larger places have many, and that means your prefix might be different from the neighbor, and might change even if you only move a block away. Though those telephone exchanges are to identify the town in which you live, they do not say where you live within that town.

Cell phones

When it comes to cell phones, the rules about telephone exchanges are not the same as they used to be. While you can find out the location of a phone simply by looking at the area code, the prefix that most cells will have will not be familiar. This is because the rise in cell phone ownership means that new telephone exchanges were necessary. Some of them might be foreign looking, and you may not know they are coming from your own community, even when someone might be right next door. You also have to consider that some get contracts out of area, and that means the exchanges will mean nothing in terms of location.

Find out who has called

When you are hoping to find out who may have called your home or your cell phone, you can try to use the telephone exchanges to see if you can figure out where a number has come from. There are many tools online that you can use to find out who called, and even why they were calling you. Sometimes just finding out about the telephone exchanges that are connected with a number can tell you a lot about who might be calling. If you are receiving threatening phone calls, this is important information for your family to have, and should be shared with the police at once.