It used to be that everyone had a standard phone in their home and locating a number or address simply required opening the white pages and locating their name. It is often more difficult now that cell phones are widely used and many people do not even have landlines, and if they do their number may be unpublished.

Even with the development of caller ID on most home phones, some numbers may appear without an identifying name and there are ways for callers to prevent their details from coming up. Reverse phone lookup directories have responded to these changing demands to provide a very useful service to resourceful phone users.

There are two common uses for these directories.

Locating Names

If you are receiving calls from someone and only a number comes up on your ID, or you want to identify cellular phone callers, reverse phone lookup services can assist in finding the name listed to the phone number in question. Just by entering the phone number you will have access to the person who is behind those calls of concern.

People needing such services include those wanting to identify a number often phoning their spouse or children's cell phone, since there is no accessible directory for cell phone numbers. Others may use lookup directories when they want to find a name listed to a landline that is unpublished. Whenever you have a number but don't know who it belongs to, a reverse phone lookup directory can deliver the information.

Searching for Addresses

another typical function is to locate an address for someone, whether you know the name of the person or not. Once you gain access to the information linked with a specific number most services will deliver additional data as well, such as the address of an home phone or an address associated with a cell phone number.

This may not be a common need for some people, but it does have its uses in quite a few situations. Such as a parent needing to find a teenager who has run away or is still out long after curfew. If they can get access to numbers from the teenager's belongings or cell phone a reverse phone lookup could quickly tell them addresses as well as names of places the child may be located.

Other circumstances may be searching for addresses to mail out party invitations to your child's friends. If you have the phone number you can find their address and mail out the invitation without calling or tracking down other busy parents.

These services can also deliver access to other kinds of information, such as income brackets or previous addresses, and one site even gives a map with an general pinpoint of where the home or business is located.

There is a minor fee for any relevant reverse phone lookup service, but if your business or personal situation demands certain data it is worth the money in the end. The charge is necessary because this sort of information is not easy or free to research, compile, and save, so dispensing it immediately to consumers such as you must also collect a charge to make up for these serviceable costs.

There more than likely will never be a phone book for cell phone numbers, and even if they were compiled most likely many of the numbers would be unlisted as is the case with many landline numbers today. The only way to gain access to such numbers is to put up a small charge either to complete a single number search or to join a lookup directory if you will need to access the service on a regular basis.