A skip trace report typically returns five core elements: one or more phone numbers ranked by confidence and tagged by type (mobile, landline, or VOIP), an email address, the subject’s current mailing address plus a history of prior addresses, an age range, and a short list of known relatives or associates. Reports from a compliant provider also include flags for Do Not Call registry status and known TCPA litigators, so every field on the page exists to answer one of two questions: can you reach this person, and should you.
What Phone Number Types Appear on a Skip Trace Report, and Why Does the Type Matter?
A skip trace report labels each phone number as mobile, landline, or VOIP (Voice over IP), because the type changes both how likely you are to reach someone and what compliance rules apply to that number. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) restricts autodialed or prerecorded calls and texts to wireless numbers specifically, so a mobile-tagged number carries more outreach risk than a landline and needs a manual dial or prior express consent before an automated campaign touches it. VOIP numbers (Google Voice, RingCentral, and similar services) sit in a gray zone: carrier data can misclassify them as mobile or landline, so a provider that flags a number as VOIP separately is giving you a more honest read on which TCPA bucket it actually falls into.
What Does Primary vs. Secondary Phone Mean on a Report?
The primary phone is the number the data provider’s confidence model ranks as most likely to currently belong to and reach the subject, based on recency of use, carrier activity, and cross-source agreement; secondary and tertiary numbers are lower-confidence alternates worth trying if the primary goes unanswered. This ranking is what a call list should follow in order: dial the primary number first, and only move down the list after a documented no-answer or wrong-number result, rather than blasting every number on the report at once. A related article on this site, How to Read Your Skip Tracing Results, covers match confidence scoring in more depth if you want the full breakdown of how that ranking gets calculated.
Why Do Skip Trace Reports Include Email Addresses?
An email address on a skip trace report gives you a second outreach channel that does not carry TCPA’s calling and texting restrictions, which makes it useful for warming up a lead before a call or for following up after an unanswered phone attempt. Email still is not unregulated: any commercial message needs to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, which requires an accurate sender identity, a working unsubscribe mechanism, and honoring opt-out requests within 10 business days. In practice, email on a skip traced lead works best as a supplement to phone outreach rather than a replacement for it, since response rates on cold email to a skip traced address are meaningfully lower than a direct call.
What’s the Difference Between a Current Address and a Historical Address?
The current address is the subject’s most recently verified residence, while historical addresses are a dated list of prior known residences pulled from credit header data, utility hookups, and public records over time. This history matters operationally: if the property you are tracing shows up as a historical address rather than the current one, that is a strong signal the owner has moved and the property may be vacant or tenant-occupied, which changes both your outreach angle and, for entity-owned parcels, whether you need an additional ownership-resolution step before contacting anyone. A gap of several years between the property address and the current address, with multiple addresses in between, also tends to correlate with lower contact rates, since it usually means the trace is working off an older or thinner data trail.
How Does a Litigator Flag or DNC Status Reduce Compliance Risk?
A litigator flag identifies phone numbers tied to serial TCPA plaintiffs or numbers previously used in TCPA litigation, and a Do Not Call (DNC) flag shows whether a number is registered on the National Do Not Call Registry, so both exist to let you scrub a call list before you dial rather than finding out the hard way. Skipping a flagged litigator number is not just risk-averse box-checking: TCPA violations carry statutory damages of 500 dollars per violation, rising to 1,500 dollars for willful violations, and a single automated campaign that hits a known litigator’s number can turn into a costly claim fast. These flags do not replace a compliance program, but they are the first filter a skip tracing report should apply before any number reaches a dialer.
Why Do Reports List Relatives and Known Associates?
Relatives and known associates appear on a skip trace report because they are frequently the fastest path to a subject who does not answer their own number, particularly on older leads like probate or tax-delinquent properties where the owner of record may be deceased, incarcerated, or simply unreachable at any number tied to them directly. For real estate investors this list is a legitimate next step after primary contact attempts fail. For debt collectors and BPOs, it comes with a hard legal boundary: the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA) generally bars a collector from discussing a debt with anyone other than the debtor, their spouse, or their attorney, so a relative or associate contact in a collections context is for location information only, never a conversation about the debt itself.
How Should You Prioritize Which Fields to Call or Email First?
The practical order most skip tracing teams settle on is: dial the primary phone first, move to secondary and tertiary numbers on a no-answer, send a follow-up email in parallel rather than waiting on it, and treat relatives or associates as a later-stage fallback once direct numbers are exhausted. The table below summarizes what each field is for and where it fits in that sequence.
| Field | What it tells you | When to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Primary phone | Highest-confidence current number | First call, every lead |
| Secondary/tertiary phone | Lower-confidence alternates | After a documented no-answer on the primary |
| Phone type (mobile/landline/VOIP) | TCPA risk level for that number | Before any automated dialing or texting |
| Email address | Secondary outreach channel | Parallel follow-up or re-engagement |
| Current address | Most recent verified residence | Confirms occupancy before a mailer or visit |
| Historical addresses | Prior residences over time | Flags a vacant or moved-away property |
| Litigator/DNC flags | Compliance risk on a specific number | Scrub before any outreach, every time |
| Relatives/associates | Indirect contact path | Fallback once direct numbers are exhausted |
Frequently Asked Questions
Does a skip trace report include a person’s date of birth?
Most consumer-facing skip trace reports return an age range rather than a full date of birth, since exact DOB is more tightly restricted data under the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) and related state privacy rules. An age range is usually precise enough to confirm you have the right person when cross-checked against the property or debt record you are tracing from.
How accurate are the phone numbers on a skip trace report?
Accuracy varies by how recently the subject’s data was updated across the provider’s sources and by how the report ranks confidence, which is why the primary-number ranking matters more than the raw count of numbers returned. Dialing in ranked order and logging outcomes (answered, wrong number, disconnected) is the most reliable way to see real accuracy for your own lead types over time, since it varies by list source as much as by provider.
Can I use the email addresses from a skip trace report for cold email marketing?
You can, but every message still has to comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, meaning accurate header and sender information, no deceptive subject lines, a visible physical address, and a working opt-out link honored within 10 business days. Skip traced emails are best used for direct, individualized outreach tied to a specific property or account rather than bulk marketing campaigns.
What’s the difference between a skip trace report and a full background check?
A skip trace report is built to answer one question, where is this person and how do I reach them, so it focuses on current contact fields, address history, and relatives. A full background check is broader and typically includes criminal records, employment history, and financial records, which skip tracing providers generally do not return and, for FCRA-regulated purposes, are not permitted to without a specific permissible-purpose certification.
How many phone numbers does a typical skip trace report return?
Most reports return between one and three ranked phone numbers per matched record, though this depends heavily on how much the data sources have on the individual and how old the underlying lead is. A lead with no phone numbers at all, or only disconnected ones, is a normal outcome on thin or very old records rather than a sign something went wrong with the trace.
Skip tracing is only as useful as what you do with the fields it returns. US SkipTracing prices every record the same way regardless of field count or match difficulty: 1.9 cents per record for skip tracing and 2.5 cents per record for lead generation, with no subscription, no package fees, and no minimum order. Upload a list and see exactly which fields come back before committing to anything larger.