Searching for reverse phone lookup services can become confusing. You may begin with a quick Google search, assuming it will quickly pop up and you'll have the information you need with minimal 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 service subscription.
Revising your search to specify free reverse phone lookup reveals additional pay services sneaking in claims that they are completely free. They sometimes allow you to type in the number for free and award you with very nominal information such as the city and state, but if you want to obtain the useful details like a name or address you will then be asked to pay.
Totally free reverse phone lookup does not exist. Providers of this data go to great efforts and sometimes money to collect information including unlisted residential numbers, cellular numbers, and sometimes address histories. They have no use for this information other than to make it available to you for a minor charge.
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 theft most people won't just pick the first site they find and hand over their credit card information. Finding the most trustworthy directories is just as necessary as when you shop for tennis shoes or pocketbooks over the internet.
Finding the information you need isn't very hard, once you access a reputable service.
There are a growing number of competing directories all with different fees and delivering different combinations of data. When you simply need to identify the name behind a strange number calling your home or need to determine exactly who your teenager is talking with in the middle of the night, you probably don't have the desire to evaluate different services.
The easiest solution may be to go with a name that many of us have grown up with and access the web-based version of the white 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 free of charge, including if the number is a cell phone or landline and a map pinpointing the general location if it is a home or business. You won't get much beyond that, especially if you are looking up a cell phone or a landline that is unlisted.
Be alert at this point because there are links from these pages that offer more information, such as registered names and residential addresses, for a charge. These are links to other webpages, so you have left the security of the yellow pages website so you should check the legitimacy of these websites just as you would with any other. Yellow pages itself is not going to give you much information other than a general location; you will need to search elsewhere for anything else, especially if you wish to research a cell phone or unlisted number.
The easiest way to locate reverse phone lookup websites for basic information is to go to a reputable directory with a nominal one time fee collected with a secure payment system. If you just want a one time number search then it is usually not worth the money to sign up for a unlimited service. Find one that offers a one time search for a minor price, usually just a buck or two.
Forking over a large fee for very limited information or being asked to secure information by sending card numbers by email or other non-secure forms are clear signals of a scam.