Not long ago, everyone had a landline phone in their home and finding a phone number or address was a matter of opening the white pages and searching for the name. This has become 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now that cell phones are widely used and many people do not even have landlines, and if they do their number may be unpublished.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 development of caller ID on most landlines, many numbers may appear without an identifying name and there are ways for callers to prevent their name from coming up. Reverse phone lookup providers have stepped up to these changing demands to offer a very useful service to resourceful phone users.

There are two common uses for these directories.

Searching for Names

If you are receiving calls from someone and only a number shows on your ID, or you need to figure out cell phone callers, reverse phone lookup directories can help you find out the name listed to the phone number of concern. Just by typing in the phone number you will have access to whoever is responsible for the phone calls in question.

People in search of such services include those who need to identify a number often texting their spouse or teenager's cell phone, since there is no accessible directory for cell phone numbers. Others may use this when they want to find a name registered to a home phone that may be unlisted. Anytime you have a phone number but are uncertain who it belongs to, a reverse phone lookup directory can help.

Finding Addresses

another common use is to find an address for someone, whether you know the name of the person or not. Once you find the information connected with a particular number most services will deliver other sorts of data as well, which may include the address of an landline or an address associated with a cell phone number.

This may not be a typical need for some people, but it does have its uses in some situations. Such as a parent needing to track down 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 reverse phone lookup could quickly reveal addresses and names of places the teenager may be located.

More common situations may be looking for addresses to send out party invitations to your child's friends. If you have a phone number you can find their address and easily deliver the invite without calling or tracking down other busy family.

Lookup websites can also give you a connection to other various types of information, 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 legitimate reverse phone lookup service, but if your business or personal situation demands particular data it is worth the money in the long run. The charge is necessary because this kind of information is not easy or completely free to research, compile, and store, so issuing it as needed to people such as you must also collect a fee to account for such operational expenditures.

There likely will never be a phone book for cellular 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 best way to obtain access to such phone numbers is to put up a small charge either to do a single number search or to join a lookup service if you will need to access the directory on a regular basis.