Not long ago, everyone had a landline phone in their home and locating a number or address was a matter of opening the phone book and locating the name. This has become more complex now that cell phones are in common use and many people do not even have landlines, and if they do their number may be unlisted.

Even with the development of caller ID on most landlines, many numbers may show up without an identifying name and there are ways for callers to prevent their details from appearing. Reverse phone lookup directories have responded to these changing times to offer a very useful 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 is revealed on your caller ID, or you want to figure out cellular phone callers, reverse phone lookup directories can assist in finding the name listed to the number in question. Just by typing in the phone number you will have access to whoever is responsible for the bothersome phone calls.

People in search of this service include those who need to identify a number often phoning their spouse or children's cell phone, since there is no phone book for cell phone numbers. Other people may use this when they want to identify a name listed to a home phone that is unpublished. Whenever you have a number but aren't sure who it belongs to, a reverse phone lookup service can deliver the information.

Searching for Addresses

another common use is to identify an address for someone, whether you know their name or not. Once you find the information linked with a particular number most services will deliver other sorts of data as well, which includes the address of the home phone or the address connected to a cell phone number.

This may not be an everyday need for some people, but it does have its uses in quite a few situations. For example, take a parent needing to track down a teenager who has run away or is still out well past curfew. If they can get access to numbers from the teenager's bedroom or cell phone a reverse phone lookup could quickly reveal addresses as well as names of places the teenager may be located.

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

Lookup directories can also deliver a connection to other various types of data, like income brackets and address histories, and one site even gives a map with an general pinpoint of where the home or business is located.

There will be a minor fee for any legitimate reverse phone lookup service, but if your business or personal life demands accurate information it is money well spent in the long run. The charge is unavoidable because this kind of information is not easy or free to research, collect, and store, so dispensing it on demand to others like you must also come with a fee to account for these serviceable expenditures.

There probably will never be a phone book for cell phone numbers, and even if they were compiled it is probable many of the numbers would be unpublished as is the case with many landline numbers right now. The only way to gain access to such numbers is to put up a minor fee either to do a one time phone number search or to join a lookup service if you will need to access the directory on a regular basis.