python-freecarrierlookup

This is a Python wrapper for the FreeCarrierLookup.com web service, which allows you to lookup the carrier and mobile/landline status of phone numbers in many countries.

Limitations

FreeCarrierLookup.com now requires the user to solve a CAPTCHA before each number looked up. The CAPTCHA takes the form of a simple word problem (e.g. "how many legs does a horse have?" or "what are the last three letters of PIANO?") encoded as an image.

Dependencies

• Python 3.x
• requests
• (recommended) phonenumbers and pytesseract

For development purposes, you can install the dependencies with pip install -r requirements.txt in the project root directory.

The phonenumbers module is required to parse numbers into country code and national numbers. Without it you'll need to specify a single country code for all numbers.

The pytesseract module is required to use optical character recognition to convert the CAPTCHA prompts to text form. Without it you'll need to view each CAPTCHA prompt in image form.

Command-line usage

usage: fcl [-h] [--region REGION] [--cc CC | -E] [-c] [-u USER_AGENT]
           [-r RATE_LIMIT]
           phone_number [phone_number ...]

Lookup carrier information using FreeCarrierLookup.com

positional arguments:
  phone_number          Phone number to lookup

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --region REGION       libphonenumber dialing region (default 'US')
  --no-offline          Do not include offline-estimated timezone,
                        geolocation, and (for some countries) carrier
  --cc CC               Default country code (if none, all numbers must be in
                        E.164 format)
  -E, --assume-e164     Assume E.164 format even if leading '+' not present
  -o OUTPUT, --output OUTPUT
                        Output file (default is stdout)
  -c, --csv             Output results in CSV format
  -u USER_AGENT, --user-agent USER_AGENT
                        User-Agent string (default is none)
  -r RATE_LIMIT, --rate-limit RATE_LIMIT
                        Rate limit in seconds per query (default is none)
  --proxy PROXY         HTTPS proxy (in any format accepted by python-
                        requests, e.g. socks5://localhost:8080)

Examples

Note: these examples exclude the CAPTCHA prompts and responses for clarity

Looking up Google's phone number, Facebook's AccountKit phone number, KLM's phone number, NTT's phone number, and the main number for the Parliament of Canada…

$ fcl --cc=1 650-253-0000 650-798-9814 +31206490787 +811200-64337 613-992-4793
+1 6502530000: {'Carrier': 'Level 3 Communications, LLC', 'Is Wireless': 'n'}
+1 6507989814: {'Carrier': 'Bellsouth Mobility, LLC - GA', 'Is Wireless': 'y', 'MMS Gateway Address': '6507989814@mms.att.net', 'SMS Gateway Address': '6507989814@txt.att.net'}
+31 206490787: {'Carrier': 'Tele2  Nederland', 'Is Wireless': 'n'}
+81 120064337: {'Carrier': 'NTT Communications', 'Is Wireless': 'n'}
+1 6139924793: {'Is Wireless': 'n', 'Carrier': 'Bell Canada', 'Note': 'NOTE: This result is not number-portability aware. Due to regulations in Canada, ...'}

… or in CSV format:

$ fcl --csv --cc=1 650-253-0000 +31206490787 +811200-64337
Country Code,Phone Number,Carrier,Is Wireless,SMS Gateway Address,MMS Gateway Address,Note,Extra
1,6502530000,"Level 3 Communications, LLC",n,,,,
1,6507989814,"Bellsouth Mobility, LLC - GA",y,6507989814@txt.att.net,6507989814@mms.att.net,,
31,206490787,Tele2  Nederland,n,,,,
81,120064337,NTT Communications,n,,,,
1,6139924793,Bell Canada,n,,,"NOTE: This result is not number-portability aware. Due to regulations in Canada, ...",

API

The FreeCarrierLookup accepts optional two optional parameters:

• session (can be populated with a custom requests.Session object)
• user_agent (sets a specific user-agent string; default is not to use any)

>>> import freecarrierlookup
>>> l = freecarrierlookup.FreeCarrierLookup()
>>> image, ocr = l.get_captcha()
>>> print(ocr)
How many legs does a HORSE have?
>>> l.lookup('1', '6502530000', 4)
{'Carrier': 'Level 3 Communications, LLC', 'Is Wireless': 'n'}
>>> image, ocr = l.get_captcha()
>>> print(ocr)
What is the plural of RAT?
>>> l.lookup('12345', '999999999', 'RATS')
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
  File "freecarrierlookup/__init__.py", line 55, in lookup
    raise RuntimeError(status, strings)
RuntimeError: ('error', ['Invalid phone number'])

License

GPLv3 or later