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

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

There are two typical uses for these directories.

Locating Names

If you are receiving calls from someone and only a number shows on your caller ID, or you need to figure out cell phone callers, reverse phone lookup services can assist in finding the name registered to the phone number of concern. Just by typing in the phone number you will have access to the person who is responsible for the calls of concern.

People needing lookup directories include those who need to identify a number frequently phoning their spouse or teenager's cell phone, since there is no public directory for cell phone numbers. Others may use this when they need to find a name connected to a home phone that may be unlisted. Anytime you have a phone number but are uncertain who it belongs to, a reverse phone lookup directory can assist you.

Locating Addresses

The other common use is to find an address for someone, whether you know the name of the person or not. Once you plug into the information linked with a certain phone number most directories will deliver additional data as well, such as the address of the home phone or the address associated with a cell phone number.

This may not be an everyday need for most people, but it does have its uses in quite a few situations. Such as a parent desperate to track down a teenager who has run off or is still out long after curfew. If they can find phone numbers from the teenager's bedroom or cell phone a lookup directory could quickly uncover addresses and names of locations the teenager may be at that time.

Other situations may be looking for addresses to send out party invitations to your child's classmates. If you have their phone number you can find their address and mail out the invitation without calling and tracking down other busy family.

These services can also deliver a connection to other sorts of information, including income brackets and previous addresses, and one site even gives a map with an general pinpoint to the business or home's location.

There will be a small charge for any up to date reverse phone lookup website, but if your business or personal life requires certain information it is money well spent in the long run. The charge is unavoidable because this kind of information is not simple or completely free to research, collect, and save, so issuing it on demand to others such as you must also come with a fee to make up for these working expenditures.

There more than likely will never be a phone book for cell phone numbers, and even if there were most likely many of the numbers would be unpublished just like many home phone numbers right now. The best way to obtain access to these numbers is to pay a small charge either to do a single number search or to join a lookup directory if you will be using the service on a regular basis.