Searching for reverse phone lookup services can become confusing. You may begin with a quick Google search, hoping it will automatically pop up and you'll find the information you desire with very little effort. Yet what actually comes up are various paid services which vary from less than a buck for one number search to upwards of fifteen dollars for a long term subscription.
Editing your search to include free reverse phone lookup reveals even more pay sites hiding behind claims that they are completely free. They sometimes allow you to enter the number without mention of a fee and deliver very basic information such as the city and state, but in order to see the useful details like a name or address you will once again be asked to pay.
Totally free reverse phone lookup is not possible at this point. Providers of this data put out great measures and even money to compile information like unpublished landline numbers, cell phone numbers, and sometimes address histories. These businesses have no purpose to collect this information other than to deliver it to consumers for a nominal charge.
how you proceed from here depends on how much you really want to reveal the person behind that phone number. In the age of identity fraud many people won't just pull up the cheapest site and enter their personal information. Finding the most trustworthy services is just as necessary as when you buy tennis shoes or handbags through the web.
Retrieving the information you need isn't very hard, once you access a reputable source.
There are a growing number of competing services all with different prices and delivering different combinations of data. When you only want to identify the person registered with a unidentified phone number calling your home or wish to identify exactly who your teenager is chatting with in the middle of the night, you probably don't have the desire to rate different websites.
The easiest solution may be to go with a brand that many people have grown up with and access the web-based version of the yellow pages. There is a sense of safety with a common popular name that has been around for years. You can search a phone number and get the most basic information here free of charge, including if the number is a cell phone or residential line and a map indicating the general location if it is a home or business. You won't find much more than that, especially if you are researching a cell phone or a landline that is unpublished.
Be careful at this point because there are links from these pages that promise more detailed information, like names and desired addresses, for a charge. These are links to other webpages, so you no longer necessarily have the security of the white pages website so you should verify the reputation of these services just like any other. White pages itself is not going to give you much information beyond a general location; you will need to look elsewhere for anything else, especially if you want to know about a cell phone or unpublished number.
The easiest way to access reverse phone lookup directories for basic needs is to go to a proven database with a small one time charge accepted with a secure payment system. If you only need a one time number search then it is probably not worth the charge to sign up for a more detailed service. Look for one that provides a single search for a small price, usually just a buck or two.
Paying a large fee for very limited information or being asked to secure information by sending financial information by email or other non-secure methods are obvious signs of a scam.