Not long ago, everyone had a landline phone in their home and finding a phone number or address simply required opening the yellow pages and finding their name. Things have grown more difficult now that cell phones are widely used and many people do not even have home phones, and if they do their number may be unpublished.
Even with the widespread use 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 details from coming up. Reverse phone lookup services have responded to these changing times to provide a very timely service to resourceful phone users.
There are two typical uses for these directories.
Searching for Names
If you are receiving calls from someone and only a number comes up on your caller ID, or you want to identify cellular phone callers, reverse phone lookup services can help you find out the name registered to the number in question. Just by entering the phone number you will have access to whoever is initiating the phone calls in question.
People looking for lookup directories include those who need to check up on a number constantly texting their spouse or children's cell phone, since there is no phone book for cell phone numbers. Others may use this when they need to identify a name registered to a home phone that may be unpublished. Whenever you have a phone number but aren't sure who it is connected to, a reverse phone lookup directory can assist you.
Finding Addresses
another typical use is to identify an address for someone, whether you know their name or not. Once you plug into the contact information associated with a particular phone number most services will give other sorts of data as well, which includes the address of an home phone or an address connected 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. Such as a parent needing to locate a teenager who has run off or has not returned home well past curfew. If they can come up with numbers from the teenager's bedroom or cell phone a lookup directory could quickly uncover addresses as well as names of locations the child may be at that time.
Other circumstances may be looking for addresses to mail out party invitations to your child's friends. If you have a phone number you can get their address and mail out the invitation without calling and tracking down other busy family.
Lookup websites can also give you a connection to other kinds of data, including income brackets or address histories, and one site even gives a map with an rough pinpoint of where the home or business is located.
There is a small charge for any relevant reverse phone lookup website, but if your business or personal life demands particular information it is money well spent in the long run. The charge is unavoidable because this variety of information is not simple or completely free to research, pull together, and store, so issuing it immediately to consumers such as you must also come with a charge to account for such serviceable costs.
There likely will never be a public directory for cell phone numbers, and even if they were compiled it is probable the majority of the numbers would be unpublished as is the case with many home phone numbers today. The only way to gain access to such phone numbers is to pay a small fee either to do a one time phone number lookup or to join a lookup service if you will need to access the directory long term.