Looking for reverse phone lookup services can become complicated. You may start out with a simple internet search, hoping it will quickly pop up and you'll find the information you need with very little effort. Yet what actually comes up is a long list of paid services which range from less than a buck for one lookup to upwards of fifteen dollars for a service subscription.

Revising your search to indicate free reverse phone lookup reveals additional pay sites advertising claims to be free. They may allow you to enter the number without mention of a fee and give very useless information such as the city and state, but if you want to see the useful information like a name or address you will once again be asked to pay.

Absolutely free reverse phone lookup is not possible at this point. Providers of this information go to great efforts and sometimes money to assemble information including unlisted home phone numbers, cell phone numbers, and even address histories. They have no purpose to collect this information other than to pass it on to consumers for a minor fee.

how you proceed from here depends on how much you really want to find out the person behind that phone number. In the age of identity fraud most people won't just access the first site they find and enter their personal information. Finding the most reputable sites is just as important as when you purchase clothing or handbags online.

Retrieving the information you want isn't very hard, once you find a proven service.

There are many competitive services all with different prices and offering different combinations of data. When you only need to know the name behind a particular number calling your home or want to identify exactly who your child is chatting with in the middle of the night, you probably don't have the desire to rate different services.

The quickest answer may be to go with a brand that many of us have grown up with and use the web-based version of the yellow pages. There is a sense of safety with a well known popular name that has been around for years. You can search a phone number and get the most basic information here without paying, including if the number is a cell phone or landline and a map pinpointing the general location of a home or business. You won't receive much beyond that, especially if you are researching a cell phone or a landline that is unpublished.

Be aware at this point because there will be links on these pages that will deliver more detailed information, such as registered names and desired addresses, for a charge. These links lead to different sites, so you have left the familiarity of the yellow pages website so you should ensure the reputation of these services just as with any other. Yellow pages itself is not going to deliver much information other than 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 easiest way to access reverse phone lookup directories for basic information is to find a trustworthy directory with a nominal one time fee accepted through a secure payment system. If you only need a one time number search then it is probably not worth the fee to sign up for a more detailed directory. Locate one that offers a one time search for a low price, often just a dollar or two.

Forking over a large charge for small amounts of information or being asked to secure information by sending financial information through email or other non-secure methods are flashing warnings of a scam.