Not long ago, everyone had a standard phone in their home and searching for a phone number or address was a matter of opening the yellow pages and searching for their name. Things have grown 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now that cell phones are widely used and many people do not even have landlines, and if they do their number may be unpublished.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 widespread use of caller ID on most home phones, many numbers may appear without an identifying name and there are ways for callers to stop their name from showing up. Reverse phone lookup services have stepped up to these changing times to provide a very timely service to resourceful phone users.
There are two typical uses for these directories.
Locating Names
If you are getting calls from someone and only a number is revealed on your ID, or you want to identify cellular phone callers, reverse phone lookup directories can help you find out the name listed to the number in question. Just by entering the number you will have access to whoever is behind the calls of concern.
People looking for this service include those who need to identify a number frequently calling 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 Other people may use this when they want to identify a name connected to a home phone that may be unpublished. Anytime you have a number but don't know who it is connected to, a reverse phone lookup directory can deliver the information.
Searching for Addresses
The other common function is to find an address for someone, whether you know their name or not. Once you find the contact information connected with a certain phone number most services will deliver other sorts of information as well, which may include 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 benefits in some situations. Such as a parent in a rush to locate a teenager who has run away or has not returned home well past curfew. If they can find phone numbers from the teenager's belongings or cell phone a lookup directory could quickly tell them 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 classmates. If you have the phone number you can find their address and get the invite in the mail without calling and tracking down other busy family.
Lookup directories can also deliver a connection to other various types of data, such as income brackets and previous addresses, and one site even gives a map with an estimated pinpoint of the most current location.
There is a small charge for any relevant reverse phone lookup service, but if your business or personal life demands particular data it is more than worth the payoff in the long run. The charge is necessary because this variety of information is not simple or completely free to research, pull together, and save, so distributing it on demand to others like you must also come with a fee to cover such serviceable expenditures.
There likely will never be a phone book for cell phone numbers, and even if there were most likely many of the numbers would be unlisted as is the case with many landline numbers today. The only way to obtain access to such numbers is to put up a small charge either to do a single number lookup or to join a lookup directory if you will need to access the service on a regular basis.