Not long ago, everyone had a landline phone in their home and locating a phone number or address was a matter of opening the white pages and searching for their name. It is often 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now that cell phones are widely used and many people do not even have landlines, and if they do their number may be unpublished.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 home phones, many numbers may come up without an identifying name and there are ways for callers to stop their name from showing up. Reverse phone lookup providers have responded to these changing times to offer a very valuable service to resourceful phone users.

There are two common uses for lookup directories.

Locating Names

If you are getting 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 help you find out the name listed to the phone number of concern. Just by entering the phone number you will have access to whoever is responsible for those phone calls in question.

People needing this service include those wanting to identify a number constantly texting their spouse or children's cell phone, since there is no phone book for cell phone numbers. Other people may use lookup directories when they need to identify a name registered to a home phone that is unpublished. Whenever you have a phone number but aren't sure who it belongs to, a reverse phone lookup website can help.

Finding Addresses

The other common purpose is to identify an address for someone, whether you know the name of the person or not. Once you find the information associated with a particular number most services will give additional 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 an everyday need for some people, but it does have its benefits in some situations. For example, take a parent in a rush to find a teenager who has run away or is still out well past 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 and names of places the child may be at that time.

More common circumstances may be searching for addresses to mail out party invitations to your child's friends. If you have a phone number you can find their address and easily deliver the invite without calling and tracking down other busy parents.

Lookup directories can also deliver access to other kinds of data, such as income brackets and address histories, and one site even gives a map with an estimated pinpoint of the most current location.

There will be a minor fee for any legitimate reverse phone lookup service, but if your business or personal life demands particular information it is worth the money in the long run. The fee is necessary because this sort of information is not easy or free to research, collect, and store, so issuing it as needed to others like you must also include a fee to make up for such operational expenditures.

There more than likely will never be a public directory for cellular numbers, and even if they were compiled most likely many of the numbers would be unlisted just like many home phone numbers today. The only way to gain access to such numbers is to give a minor charge either to complete a single phone number lookup or to join a lookup service if you will need to access the directory long term.