It used to be that everyone had a landline phone in their home and finding a phone number or address simply required opening the phone book and locating 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now that cell phones are widely used and many people do not even have landlines, and if they do their number may be unpublished.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 invention of caller ID on most home phones, a lot of numbers may appear without an identifying name and there are ways for callers to prevent their details from appearing. Reverse phone lookup directories have stepped up to these changing demands to offer a very useful service to modern phone users.

There are two common functions for these directories.

Searching for Names

If you are receiving calls from someone and only a number shows on your caller ID, or you need to figure out cellular phone callers, reverse phone lookup services can help you find out the name registered to the phone number in question. Just by entering the number you will have access to whoever is initiating the calls of concern.

People looking for lookup directories include those wanting to check up on a number often phoning their spouse or children's cell phone, since there is no public directory for cell phone numbers. Others may use lookup directories when they want to identify a name connected to a home phone that may be unlisted. Whenever you have a number but are uncertain who it is connected to, a reverse phone lookup service can assist you.

Searching for Addresses

The other common use is to identify an address for someone, whether you know the name of the person or not. Once you plug into the information associated with a particular phone number most directories will deliver additional data as well, such as 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 example, take a parent in a rush to track down 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 and names of locations the child may be located.

More common situations may be searching for addresses to mail out party invitations to your child's peers. If you have the phone number you can get their address and get the invite in the mail without calling or tracking down other busy parents.

These services can also give you access 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 will be a minor fee for any relevant reverse phone lookup directory, but if your business or personal situation demands particular data it is money well spent in the long run. The fee is unavoidable because this kind of information is not simple or free to research, pull together, and save, so issuing it on demand to consumers like you must also come with a fee to account for these working costs.

There probably will never be a public directory for cellular numbers, and even if there were most likely many of the numbers would be unpublished as is the case with many home phone numbers today. The only way to obtain access to such numbers is to give a small charge either to complete a single phone number search or to join a lookup service if you will need to access the service long term.