Not long ago, everyone had a landline phone in their home and finding a number or address was a matter of opening the white pages and finding the name. This has become more difficult now that cell phones are widely used and many people do not even have landlines, and if they do their number may be unpublished.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, a lot of numbers may show up without an identifying name and there are ways for callers to stop their name from appearing. Reverse phone lookup providers have responded to these changing times to provide a very useful service to resourceful phone users.
There are two typical functions for lookup directories.
Locating Names
If you are receiving calls from someone and only a number is revealed on your ID, or you want 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 entering the number you will be able to identify whoever is initiating those phone calls in question.
People looking for lookup directories include those wanting to identify a number constantly calling their spouse or children'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 home phone that is unlisted. Anytime you have a number but are uncertain who it belongs to, a reverse phone lookup website can help.
Locating Addresses
The other typical purpose is to locate an address for someone, whether you know the name of the person or not. Once you gain access to the information linked with a particular phone number most directories will give additional information as well, which may include the address of the landline or an address associated with a cell phone number.
This may not be an everyday need for some people, but it does have its uses in quite a few situations. For instance, consider a parent needing to locate a teenager who has run off or is still out well past curfew. If they can come up with numbers from the teenager's belongings or cell phone a lookup directory could quickly uncover addresses as well as names of places the teenager may be located.
Other circumstances may be looking for addresses to mail out party invitations to your child's friends. If you have the phone number you can get their address and easily deliver the invite without calling and tracking down other busy family.
Lookup websites can also deliver a connection to other kinds of data, like income brackets and address histories, and one site even gives a map with an rough pinpoint to the business or home's location.
There will be a small charge for any legitimate reverse phone lookup service, but if your business or personal life demands accurate data it is worth the money in the long run. The charge is unavoidable because this variety of information is not simple or free to research, pull together, and store, so distributing it immediately to others such as you must also include a fee to cover these working expenditures.
There likely will never be a phone book for cellular numbers, and even if there were most likely a lot of the numbers would be unlisted as is the case with many landline numbers today. The only way to get access to these numbers is to give a nominal fee either to complete a single phone number lookup or to join a lookup directory if you will need to access the directory long term.