It used to be that everyone had a standard phone in their home and finding a number or address was a matter of opening the yellow pages and locating the name. It is often 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now that cell phones are in common use and many people do not even have landlines, and if they do their number may be unpublished.

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 stop their details from showing up. Reverse phone lookup services have responded to these changing times to provide a very valuable service to modern phone users.

There are two common functions for these directories.

Finding Names

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

People in search of such services include those who need to identify a number often phoning their spouse or teenager's cell phone, since there is no accessible directory for cell phone numbers. Other people may use this when they want to know a name connected to a landline that may be unpublished. Anytime you have a number but don't know who it belongs to, a reverse phone lookup service can deliver the information.

Searching for Addresses

The other typical function is to find an address for someone, whether you know their name or not. Once you plug into the information associated with a specific number most directories will deliver additional data as well, which includes the address of the home phone or the address listed to a cell phone number.

This may not be a typical need for some people, but it does have its uses in quite a few situations. Such as a parent desperate to locate a teenager who has run off or has not returned home well past curfew. If they can get access to numbers from the teenager's bedroom or cell phone a lookup directory could quickly reveal addresses and names of locations the child may be at that time.

Other circumstances may be searching for addresses to mail out party invitations to your child's friends. If you have the phone number you can access their address and mail out the invitation without calling or tracking down other busy family.

Lookup websites can also deliver a connection to other various types of data, including income brackets and address histories, and one site even gives a map with an general pinpoint of the most current location.

There will be a nominal price for any up to date reverse phone lookup directory, but if your business or personal situation demands certain data it is more than worth the payoff in the long run. The fee is unavoidable because this kind of information is not easy or free to research, collect, and store, so issuing it on demand to people like you must also include a fee to account for these working costs.

There more than likely will never be a public directory for cellular numbers, and even if they were compiled most likely a lot of the numbers would be unlisted as is the case with many landline numbers today. The only way to gain access to these phone numbers is to pay a minor charge either to complete a single phone number lookup or to join a lookup directory if you will need to access the directory on a regular basis.