The telephone number is an interesting unit of currency. It is something most of us have, and some of us have several of them, while those with none are more disenfranchised than Luddites who choose not to use the Internet or e-mail. I met a Luddite a couple of weeks ago, a man in his 70s, who said he had never used a computer. Ever. I found that a little hard to believe, but noted that he did carry a simple flip phone.

I’ve been thinking about phone numbers after recently procuring a number that meant a lot to me over the years. It’s a (212) area code number formerly used for an art project I worked on many years ago. I’ll provide more detail privately to anyone who wants to know but for now, while setting things up in the way I intend, I’ll keep mum on the number itself and its heritage.

The process by which I procured this number involved some persistence, but also some luck. If you want to procure a specific phone number you must first, of course, determine its availability and if someone else now owns it. In my case I simply dialed the number and confirmed that it led to the obnoxious three beeps and a recorded voice announcing it was not in service.

I next determined what phone company owns the number. I used FreeCarrierLookup.com, but also cross-checked against other similar websites to confirm that Verizon owned the number. That little bit of luck made it easier than it otherwise would have been for me to get the number, since Verizon provides Fios Internet to my home. My plan was to add Fios Digital Voice Unlimited to my account, but only if I could get that specific phone number. Since Verizon owned the number there should be no problem, I thought.

It would have been different if, say, AT&T owned the number. I have no accounts with AT&T so to have gotten the number from them I would have had to do something like purchase a burner phone, or even switch cell phone carriers.

I contacted Verizon, where a representative verified the number was not in use, that it was owned by Verizon, and that I could have it. But I had a feeling it was not going to be so simple.

Sure enough, about an hour after thinking I had added phone service to my Fios account I got a call from someone named Howard. He was puzzled by my request to get this number, adding with a laugh that it looked a little weird, and random.

I told him I wanted to use the number for an art project, without adding any detail about what the project involved or my past connection to the number. I was not trying to be secretive or vague. I just was not mentally ready for a phone call from the bowels of Verizon’s telephone provisioning department asking why I wanted a specific number.

Howard said he would put in some kind of request, adding that he did not think I could have the number because it had not been out of service long enough. I asked how long the embargo on an unused phone number lasted. He didn’t know but guessed it to be a year, adding that the number was disconnected in December. I asked if I could reserve the number, or if he could give me an exact date when I could claim it, or if there was just any way to override the system preventing me from getting it.

This number meant enough to me that I was practically begging for it.

Howard said he would call me back. This was late Friday afternoon. On Monday the call came. He said he thought about it, and based on my desire and intended use he would let me have the number, manually overriding whatever automated system holds unused phone numbers hostage. I didn’t pay anything for the number, though my monthly Fios bill increased by $5. It was, truth be told, an especially excellent feeling. I’ll have more detail on this number later, though some people reading this probably know exactly what number I’m talking about.

All this got me thinking about phone numbers, and how they represent such a curious and fundamental unit of currency in our culture. It’s not something to keep secret, like a Social Security number. But it’s not something most private individuals advertise, either.

Like most people I receive unexpected calls from unknown numbers, often turning straight to the Internet for clues to see if the call came from a legitimate connection or from a scam. Even when I know it’s a robocall I find it hard to let go the feeling that somebody legitimately wanted to contact me, and that I might have missed it.

But I also maintain a healthy skepticism of the countless phone number lookup websites’ accuracy. I’ve found my phone numbers assigned to numerous other people who, I suspect, never even existed.

But lately, since procuring that coveted (212) phone number of yore, I find myself drawn back into the abyss of phone number lookup websites.

A site I started with today is opencnam.com. According to opencnam.com my Google Voice number, which I’ve had for a good number of years now, is owned by a woman named Ashley. That’s not me.

Interestingly, that (212) number I recently acquired shows up on opencnam.com as being owned by something called “GEN ART”. I wonder if that means Howard, the Verizon rep who gave me the number, put that in for the number’s caller ID, since I told him I intended to use the number for an art project. If he did it would have propagated out to the registries pretty quickly, since I only officially procured the number a few days ago.

Opencnam.com does connect my name to my old landline number, which I’ve had for over 20 years. Opencnam also correctly matches my name to my current cellphone number. But it fails on my Skype number, identifying the owner as “WHITE PLAIN, NY”.

A payphone number in Elizabeth, NJ – 908-353-9581 – is properly identified by opencnam.com as being in Elizabeth, but with no clue that it is a payphone, as other phone number lookup sites sometimes indicate. Twilio, for instance, properly identifies the “CALLER NAME” as “PAYPHONE”.

Opencnam identifies 212-246-8729, the last working payphone at Rockefeller Center, as “ROCKEFELLER CO”, where “CO” might be short for “CONCOURSE”, where the phone is located. Twilio identifies that payphone’s caller ID as “PAYPHONE”.

One could go on all day with these comparisons, but it quickly becomes clear that one must apply some level of analysis to the mixed bag of online phone number lookup sources and their accuracy. In the case of finding payphone locations it seems that a mix of Twilio and Opencnam might be enough to determine that in two of the examples above the numbers belonged to a payphone at Rockefeller Center, or in Elizabeth, NJ. But as with virtually every other publicly available source of these types I’ve encountered there is rarely if ever an exact location provided.

Opencnam identifies another payphone number, 212-599-8621, as owned by “METROPOLITAN T”, while Twilio identifies it as “PAYPHONE”. Putting both these bits of information together might provide enough of a clue for someone to contact the MTA to pinpoint that payphone’s exact location, though it’s not known to me if the MTA maintained records of its payphone locations since PTS acquired them years ago. That payphone is located at Grand Central Terminal.

The payphones in the previous examples are all old-style copper landline phones that have been in service for many years. What about the newer payphone numbers assigned to the majority of New York City payphones that now connect via Verizon’s cellular network? 516-521-7746, the number now assigned to a payphone in Astoria, shows up on Opencnam as belonging to an individual named Erik. Twilio lists the owner of the number as “null” while correctly identifying the carrier as Verizon wireless. Expanding the search to other resources I find that freecarrierlookup.com says 516-521-7746 is an invalid number, phonevalidator.com correctly reports it as a Verizon cell phone but not a payphone, and ZabaSearch returns “No Results”.