What is a Reverse Phone Lookup?

Typically, when you are thinking about someone you haven't haven't heard from in awhile or need to communicate with an old friend who you don't have a number for, you simply go to the phone book and look up their last name. These days most people do not even take up room in their living spaces with the chunky paper phone books, but would rather use internet pages containing the same information and look it up much quicker.

Yet circumstances occur in in everyday life where they obtain a phone number and need to identify who it belongs to. Phone books are designed only to look up the name of the business or person you hope to reach, so offer little help. With cell phones being so popular these days it gets even more difficult since there isn't a phone number directory accessible to the community as with standard home phones. Obviously, developments in technology have made another sort of number compilation necessary.

Reverse phone lookup means basically what the name suggests: it reverses the method in which you typically use a phone number listing. Rather than browsing for a name to locate a number or address, you use a phone number to locate the name or address of whoever the number is registered to.

Many people do not even realize this can be done, but with the existance of reverse phone lookup directories it is now widely used by many businesses. It is also on the rise with individuals who become interested in a phone number for one reason or another. It is a more modern form of the phone book and may very well erase the demand for phone books in the future.

If you are receiving a lot of unwanted phone calls, whether they are annoying hang ups, distasteful pranks, or even solicitations or bill collectors who don't clearly identify themselves but call nonstop, there is a way to discover exactly who is making the calls by utilizing one of these directories.

You can go to whitepages.com and use a limited reverse phone lookup directory for the most basic information or for published landline numbers, but there are two sorts of information that cannot be accessed with any other resource besides a more detailed directory.

  1. * If you have a phone number but no additional information and want a matching name.
  2. * When you have someone's cell phone or an unpublished landline number and want to find a name, address, or other information. Whitepages.com is not likely to help with these sorts of information because it is not equipped with the information you are searching for.

Reverse phone lookup services put out a lot of time compiling information, double checking that it is as updated as possible, and maintaining it all in an organized listing so that it can be quickly accessed by people on demand.

A good bit of this information collected is not that simple to locate and some of it must be paid for in advance. For example, a reputable, up to date listing will have to pay cell phone companies for accurate listings of numbers. As with any business, it is to be expected that you will have to pay a nominal fee to have access to their records.

The deal about the fee is it should be low and reasonable, usually about a buck or so for a one-time phone number search and under fifteen dollars for more long term access to the |listings|directory|service}. Any service which requires a large charge for very little information retrieved should be avoided.

There are too many valuable directories available to waste time and money on inaccurate resources, so ensure they actually have the information you desire before giving them your money.


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