Looking for reverse phone lookup services can become confusing. You may begin with a quick internet search, assuming it will immediately pop up and you'll find the information you need with minimal effort. Yet what actually appears is a long list of paid services which range from less than a buck for one lookup to over fifteen dollars for a long term subscription.
Changing your search to include free reverse phone lookup brings even more pay services advertising claims that they are completely free. They may allow you to type in the number without mention of a fee and give very useless information such as the city and state, but in order to get the important information like a name or address you will then be prompted to pay.
Absolutely free reverse phone lookup does not exist. Providers of this data go to great measures and sometimes money to assemble information such as unlisted home phone numbers, cellular numbers, and even address histories. These businesses have no use for this information other than to make it available to buyers for a small fee.
whether you move forward from this point depends on how much you really need to find out the name registered to that phone number. In the age of identity fraud many people won't just pull up the first site they find and reveal their personal information. Finding the most trustworthy services is just as crucial as when you purchase tennis shoes or purses online.
Retrieving the information you want isn't very difficult, once you access a proven source.
There are a growing number of competitive services all offering different charges and delivering different combinations of information. When you only need to identify the name registered with a strange number calling your home or wish to identify exactly who your child is chatting with in the middle of the night, you probably don't have the time to compare different directories.
The quickest solution may be to go with a brand that many people have grown up with and access the online version of the yellow pages. There is a sense of legitimacy when you use 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 whether the number is a cell phone or landline and a map pinpointing the general location of a home or business. You won't get much beyond that, especially if you are searching a cell phone or a home phone number that is unlisted.
Be alert at this point because there are links from these pages that offer additional information, such as registered names and residential addresses, for a charge. These links lead to other webpages, so you have left the familiarity of the white pages website so you must check the reputation of these websites just like any other. White pages itself is not going to give you much information other than a general location; you will have to search elsewhere for more, especially if you wish to know about a cell phone or unlisted number.
The best way to find reverse phone lookup websites for basic needs is to go to a proven database with a reasonable one time fee collected with a secure payment system. If you only need a one time lookup then it is probably not worth the fee to sign up for a more detailed service. Look for one that provides a single search for a small charge, usually just a dollar or two.
Paying a huge charge for very limited information or being asked to secure information by sending personal information by email or other non-secure forms are obvious warnings of a scam.