Looking for reverse phone lookup services can get confusing. You may start out with a simple Google search, assuming it will quickly appear and you'll find the information you need with very little work. Yet what actually appears is a long list of paid directories which vary from under a dollar for one lookup to over fifteen dollars for a service subscription.
Changing your search to include free reverse phone lookup delivers even more pay services advertising claims that they are completely free. They sometimes allow you to enter the number for free and deliver very nominal information such as the city or state, but in order to see the useful details like a name or address you will once again be prompted to pay.
Totally free reverse phone lookup is not possible at this point. Providers of this data go to great efforts and even money to assemble information such as unpublished residential numbers, cellular numbers, and sometimes address histories. These businesses have no use for this information other than to deliver it to you for a minor fee.
whether you move forward from here depends on how badly you really need to identify the name connected to that phone number. In the age of identity theft many people won't just access the cheapest site and enter their private information. Finding the most reputable sites is just as crucial as when you shop for clothing or purses over the internet.
Retrieving the information you want isn't very hard, once you find a reputable service.
There are a growing number of competitive directories all with different fees and offering different combinations of data. When you simply need to know the person connected to a strange number calling your home or want to identify exactly who your child is talking with at all hours of the night, you may not have the time to rate different services.
The quickest answer may be to go with a name that many of us have grown up with and use the online version of the yellow pages. There is a sense of legitimacy when you use a well known household name that has been trusted for years. You can look up a phone number and get very basic information here without paying, 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 home phone number that is unlisted.
Be careful at this point because there will be links on these pages that will deliver more information, including names and specific addresses, for a fee. These links go to different webpages, so you no longer necessarily have the security of the yellow pages website so you should ensure the reputation of these websites just as with any other. Yellow pages itself is not going to give you much information besides a general location; you will have to look elsewhere for more, especially if you wish to know about a cell phone or unlisted number.
The most effective way to find reverse phone lookup directories for basic needs is to find a trustworthy service with a small one time fee paid with a secure payment system. If you just want a one time number search then it is obviously not worth the charge to sign up for a long term service. Find one that offers a single lookup for a low charge, usually just a dollar or two.
Shelling out a large charge for small amounts of information or being asked to secure information by sending personal information by email or other non-secure forms are flashing warnings of a scam.