It used to be that everyone had a standard phone in their home and finding a phone number or address simply required opening the white pages and locating their name. This has become more complex now that cell phones are widely used and many people do not even have landlines, and if they do their number may be unpublished.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 landlines, a lot of numbers may appear without an identifying name and there are ways for callers to prevent their details from coming up. Reverse phone lookup providers have stepped up to these changing times to provide a very useful service to resourceful 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 want to identify cellular phone callers, reverse phone lookup services can assist in finding the name listed to the number of concern. Just by typing in the number you will have access to whoever is behind those bothersome phone calls.

People looking for this service 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. Other people may use lookup directories when they want to identify a name registered to a home phone that may be unpublished. Anytime you have a phone number but don't know who it belongs to, a reverse phone lookup website can help.

Locating Addresses

The other typical purpose is to locate an address for someone, whether you know their name or not. Once you plug into the contact information connected with a specific number most services will give other sorts of data as well, which may include the address of an home phone or an address listed to 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. For instance, consider a parent desperate to find a teenager who has run away or has not returned home well past curfew. If they can find phone numbers from the teenager's belongings or cell phone a lookup directory could quickly tell them addresses and names of places the child may be located.

Other circumstances may be looking for addresses to send out party invitations to your child's peers. If you have the phone number you can find their address and easily deliver the invite without calling or tracking down other busy people.

Lookup directories can also give you a connection to other various types of information, including income brackets or address histories, and one site even gives a map with an general pinpoint of the most current location.

There is a minor fee for any relevant reverse phone lookup service, but if your business or personal life requires certain data it is more than worth the payoff in the end. The fee is required because this variety of information is not easy or completely free to research, compile, and store, so distributing it on demand to people such as you must also collect a fee to account for such serviceable costs.

There likely will never be a public directory for cellular numbers, and even if there were it is probable many of the numbers would be unpublished as is the case with many landline numbers today. The best way to get access to these phone numbers is to pay a minor charge either to complete a one time number lookup or to join a lookup service if you will be using the directory on a regular basis.