It used to be that everyone had a landline phone in their home and finding a phone number or address was a matter of opening the yellow pages and finding the name. It is often more complex 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, many numbers may come up without an identifying name and there are ways for callers to stop their details from appearing. Reverse phone lookup directories have stepped up to these changing demands to offer a very useful service to modern phone users.
There are two typical uses for these directories.
Locating Names
If you are getting calls from someone and only a number shows on your caller ID, or you need to figure out cellular 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 behind those calls of concern.
People needing lookup directories include those wanting to identify a number frequently calling their spouse or teenager's cell phone, since there is no phone book for cell phone numbers. Other people may use lookup directories when they want to identify a name listed to a home phone that may be unlisted. Anytime you have a number but don't know who it is connected to, a reverse phone lookup website can deliver the information.
Finding Addresses
another typical use is to locate an address for someone, whether you know the name of the person or not. Once you plug into the contact information connected with a specific number most services will deliver additional information as well, which may include the address of an home phone or an address associated with a cell phone number.
This may not be a common need for most people, but it does have its benefits in quite a few situations. For example, take a parent needing to locate a teenager who has run away or is still out long after curfew. If they can get access to numbers from the teenager's belongings or cell phone a reverse phone lookup could quickly reveal addresses and names of places the child may be at that time.
More common situations may be searching for addresses to mail 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 people.
These services can also give you access to other sorts of data, such as income brackets or address histories, and one site even gives a map with an rough pinpoint of the most current location.
There is a small charge for any up to date reverse phone lookup service, but if your business or personal life requires particular information it is worth the money in the end. The fee is required because this kind of information is not simple or free to research, collect, and protect, so distributing it on demand to consumers such as you must also collect a charge to account for such working costs.
There more than likely will never be a public directory for cellular numbers, and even if there were most likely the majority of the numbers would be unpublished just like many home phone numbers right now. The only way to get access to such phone numbers is to put up a small fee either to complete a single phone number search or to join a lookup directory if you will be using the directory on a regular basis.