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Caller ID Made Simple
- stillinbeta 15y agoIt seems odd that it only returns a province/state when just the area code provides more information than that. Example: any (647) or (416) area code will always be from Toronto, but numbers for both just return ONTARIO.
- savrajsingh 15y agoI've wondered why twilio doesn't have this feature. Good stuff!
- taf2 15y agoThey do provide caller id information, but not in a query interface like this. You either get the caller id information after making a call or receiving a call. Assuming you have the number configured and it costs 1 cent per lookup with the associated call.
- chime 15y agoThis is the first API that I've encountered that works with cellphone numbers. I can see this being integrated into Android for incoming calls from unknown cellphone numbers.
- mikeknoop 15y agoMy thoughts exactly! I easily get less than 60 calls per hour so this would be perfect. Interestingly, the caller ID for my number is tied to the first owner of my account before it was transferred to me (which happened many years ago).
- mwally 15y agoAn Android app is currently in development, and will be released free of charge. We are having an issue, however, because non-GSM carriers rarely allow data transmissions during a voice call, including the ringing state of incoming calls.
- kcbanner 15y agoEven a lookup app would be handy for seeing missed calls, etc.
- mwally 15y agoGive us a few more weeks of development for this, and it will be ready. The current working title of the Android app is "FreeCallerID," but we may change this before launch. Just look for the Round OpenCNAM logo to make sure you found the right app.
- toomuchtodo 15y agoNeed beta testers?
- andrewpi 15y agoIt should still work while on Wi-Fi, correct? That would still be an improvement over the status quo (no caller ID).
- mwally 15y agoYes, the in-development Android app does work when the Android device is on wifi.
- drivebyacct2 15y agoWithout Voice-over-LTE, I'm not sure how you're going to get around it. It's not a carrier limitation, it's a limitation of CDMA radios and implementations.
- saurik 15y agoWe actually have this on iOS: it is called IntelliID; that said, the concept doesn't work very well, because by the time the phone gets its data connection warm enough and is able to do the minimum two round-trips over the incredibly high-latency cellular connection to get the data (and have to wait for the lookup itself, which seems to be an entire half a second for this API), you are pretty much fighting with the call timing out and going to voicemail.
- huhtenberg 15y agoThe drawing - is that Goemon from Rupan/Lupin series by any chance?
- asciident 15y agoI tried 6 numbers of friends and only one returned a result. Are many numbers not callerid-able, or is the api just bogged down?
- mikeknoop 15y agoI had to refresh the page a few seconds later to get my ID information to show up after the first request.
- b14ck 15y agoHi there. So, I'm the author of this article. Anyhow, for our free-tier users we don't provide realtime lookups. Basically, we'll only return a result if we have a caller ID in our cache. So, if you get a 404 (no output), then try again a few seconds later after we've had time to do the lookup via our backend. Sorry about that! Realtime lookups are currently restricted to API key users only.
- mikeknoop 15y agoYou might make this more obvious. Also, you might state how to distinguish between "sorry we need more time to look this up" and an actual 404 or error. HTTP code 202 Accepted seems appropriate for this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes)
- premchai21 15y ago504 Gateway Timeout would be the obvious one, since if I'm reading this correctly it's essentially a timeout of zero; 5xx status codes are indicative of retriability later on. But I think that sort of performance would make the free tier essentially worthless. “All you have to do is hit our API endpoint, and BAM, you get results back.” Except you really don't. Analogy: a caching DNS resolver that returned an instant SERVFAIL if the results weren't already in memory wouldn't be considered acceptable even for demo purposes anywhere that I've seen.
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- steveh73 15y agoPlease make it more obvious that this only works for US phone numbers
- mwally 15y agoIt's not restricted to US only, but all of the NANPA. North American Numbering Plan Administration covers everywhere that uses the country code +1. This includes all of Canada, many islands and territories, and a few other exotic locations.
- inghoff 15y agoI just tried it for some numbers around Montreal. Apart from the delayed results issue, it works.
- narcissus 15y agoI just tried my home number and the name it came up with was 'Nova Scotia'. My landline provider is based in Halifax, but I'm in PEI. I'm kind of used to that, though :)
- AdleyEskridge 15y agoRandall, This looks remarkably easy to use. Just a small tip: On opencname's home page, you suggest users try the following API call: $ curl https://api.opencnam.com/v1/phone/2024561111 US GOVERNMENT I tried it and received a different result: $ curl https://api.opencnam.com/v1/phone/2024561111 DIST OF COLUMBI Perhaps you should update your home page to reflect this?
- krrose27 15y agoI definitely find it interesting. As somehow it pulls up my (not) apparently unlisted home phone; also, it pulls up family members names for cellphones which are under my name on the contract. So I am definitely interested in finding out where this data is being taken from?
- b14ck 15y agoHey krrose27, we basically pull the information from a variety of sources, all publicly available. If we can get the caller ID name information, then it means any call made from those numbers to a caller ID capable phone (with caller ID service) will be able to see it also.
- sashametro 15y agoI wonder if the providers of this service have thought about crowd-sourcing the caller-id information, like http://mrnumber.com/ http://mrnumber.com/ whose free tier harvests number->name mapping from users address books...
- gruntle888 15y agoThis would not work because of the sheer number of users who store nicknames, particularly uncomplimentary ones. Would you want your name displaying as "that douchebag" or "bar slut"?
- sunsu 15y agoI would ONLY be willing to use this if it returned better data than Twilio's CNAM lookups (costs $0.01) for a cheaper overall price. So far, I've tested my number, and a few others, that I know have CNAM data that this service only provides a STATE for. Hopefully it will get better but it's not there yet for me.
- fenesiistvan 15y agoNANPA (US+Canada) only :(
- b14ck 15y agoThere are some other small countries / territories also on NANPA, but yeah, sorry!
- TazeTSchnitzel 15y agoWell, I guess it might be useful in Jamaica.
- infinitivium 15y agoThis is cool, but fix the double request thing if you're going to have a free version...
- EricR23 15y agoThis is awesome! I had a couple of free hours, so I hacked together a little Ruby app that validates a telephone number and full name pair. This could be used for sign-up security, etc. You can find the repo here: https://github.com/EricR/sinatra-cnam-lookup https://github.com/EricR/sinatra-cnam-lookup
- adityar 15y agoThis may be common knowledge but in the browser address bar do https://api.opencnam.com/v1/phone/2024561111?format=text https://api.opencnam.com/v1/phone/2024561111?format=text
- tocomment 15y agoIt just says "wireless caller" for my number. Does it usually provide more information? I don't know how useful this is otherwise.
- tocomment 15y agoDoes anyone have any insight into this? Are you'all getting better results?
- gruntle888 15y agoThat's probably an intentional choice by your carrier, many wireless carriers do that rather than provide an actual name for each number.
- joshaidan 15y agoFor what it's worth, and for all those asking questions about Canadian numbers, caller id name is handled differently in Canada than in the states. When a carrier sends an outgoing call, they include the caller id name in the SS7 IAM (Initial Message), unlike the states where the receiving carrier has to do a database lookup on the number to retrieve the name. This likely explains why a lot of Canadian numbers are not returning any results, or incorrect results. Personally, I think the Canadian system of including the name in the IAM works a lot better than having to do a DB lookup.
- guan 15y agoI believe this is also the case for public switched telephone network in the US. On a landline, the name and number of the calling party is transferred by Bell 202 and a lot of phones will display this information.
- gruntle888 15y agoThis discussion is about how the name is delivered to the telephone company being called, not from that company to your phone. In the US, the calling telephone company sends the number, the called company looks it up in a database, then sends the name they get to your phone. Everything but the delivery to the phone takes place over the SS7 network.
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