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

Even with the development of caller ID on most home phones, a lot of numbers may appear without an identifying name and there are ways for callers to block their name from showing up. Reverse phone lookup services have responded to these changing times to provide a very useful service to modern phone users.

There are two typical uses for these services.

Finding Names

If you are getting calls from someone and only a number is revealed on your caller ID, or you need to identify cellular phone callers, reverse phone lookup services can help you find out the name listed to the phone number in question. Just by typing in the number you will be able to identify whoever is behind those phone calls in question.

People in search of lookup directories include those wanting to identify a number constantly phoning their spouse or children's cell phone, since there is no phone book for cell phone numbers. Others may use this when they want to identify a name listed to a landline that is unpublished. Anytime you have a phone number but are uncertain who it belongs to, a reverse phone lookup service can help.

Locating Addresses

The other common purpose is to locate an address for someone, whether you know the name of the person or not. Once you find the information connected with a certain number most services will give additional information as well, which may include the address of the landline 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 in a rush to find 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 reverse phone lookup could quickly reveal addresses as well as names of locations the child may be at that time.

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

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

There will be a small charge for any relevant reverse phone lookup directory, but if your business or personal life demands accurate information it is money well spent in the end. The fee is unavoidable because this variety of information is not simple or completely free to research, pull together, and store, so dispensing it as needed to others such as you must also collect a fee to make up for these serviceable costs.

There likely will never be a phone book for cell phone numbers, and even if there were most likely a lot of the numbers would be unlisted as is the case with many home phone numbers right now. The only way to gain access to these numbers is to give a small charge either to complete a single number lookup or to join a lookup service if you will be using the service on a regular basis.