Searching for reverse phone lookup services can get complicated. You may begin with a quick internet search, hoping it will automatically pop up and you'll have the information you need with very little effort. Yet what actually appears is a long list of paid services which vary from less than a buck for one lookup to over fifteen dollars for a service subscription.

Revising your search to indicate free reverse phone lookup brings additional pay services advertising claims that they are completely free. They sometimes allow you to type in the number without mention of a fee and deliver very useless information such as the city or state, but in order to obtain the important details such as a name or address you will once again be asked to hand over a fee.

Completely free reverse phone lookup is not possible at this point. Providers of this information go to great efforts and even money to collect information including unpublished landline numbers, cell phone numbers, and sometimes address histories. These businesses have no use for this information other than to pass it on to you for a nominal fee.

how you proceed from this point depends on how badly you really desire to find out the name registered to that phone number. In the age of identity fraud most people won't just access the first site they find and hand over their personal information. Finding the most reputable services is just as crucial as when you shop for tennis shoes or purses online.

Retrieving the information you desire isn't very hard, once you access a reputable source.

There are a growing number of competitive services all with different charges and offering different combinations of data. When you only need to determine the name registered with a strange phone number calling your home or want to identify exactly who your teenager is chatting with in the middle of the night, you may not have the time to rate different directories.

The easiest answer may be to go with a brand that many of us have grown up with and access the online version of the yellow pages. There is a sense of legitimacy when you use a common household name that has been around for years. You can look up a phone number and get very basic information here for free, including whether the number is a cell phone or home line and a map indicating the general location of a home or business. You won't receive much more than that, especially if you are searching a cell phone or a residential number that is unlisted.

Be careful at this point because there are links from these pages that will deliver more detailed information, such as 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 need to verify the reputation of these websites just as with any other. White pages itself is not going to deliver much information besides a general location; you will need to look elsewhere for more, especially if you need to know about a cell phone or unpublished number.

The best way to access reverse phone lookup directories for basic information is to find a trustworthy service with a nominal one time charge collected through a secure payment system. If you only need a one time lookup then it is usually not worth the charge to sign up for a more detailed service. Find one that delivers a single lookup for a minor fee, usually just a dollar or two.

Shelling out a large charge for very limited information or being asked to secure information by sending personal information by email or other non-secure forms are clear signals of a scam.