Normally, when you are thinking about someone you haven't have lost touch with or need to communicate with an coworker who you don't have a phone number for, you of course find the phone book and search for their last name. Yet in current times most people do not even take up room in their homes with the wasteful paper phone books, but go to internet pages containing the same information and look it up much quicker.
Yet things happen in most people's lives where they obtain a phone number and need to identify who it belongs to. Phone books are designed around knowing the name of the business or person you need to reach, and therefore offer little help. With cell phones being so popular these days it gets even more troublesome because there isn't a cell phone phone book free to the public as we have with residential numbers. Clearly, technological advances have made another sort of phone number directory necessary.
Reverse phone lookup means just what the name states: it reverses the way you normally use a phone number listing. Rather than searching for a name to get to a phone number or address, you use a phone number to find the name or address of whoever the number may be listed under.
Most people do not even realize this can be done, but with the invention of reverse phone lookup websites it is now widely used by many businesses. It is also growing with individuals who become curious about a phone number for whatever reason. It is a new sort of phone book that could potentially eliminate the demand for phone books in the future.
If you get a lot of disturbing calls, whether they are annoying hang ups, distasteful pranks, or even solicitations and bill collectors who don't reveal who they are but call nonstop, there is a way to figure out just who is making the calls by utilizing one of these websites.
You can go to yellowpages.com and use a free reverse phone lookup service for the most basic information or for published home phone numbers, but there are two varieties of information that cannot be accessed by any other resource besides a more detailed listing.
- * When you have a phone number but no other information and must find a name.
- * When you have a cell phone or an unpublished home phone number and want to find a name, address, or other information. Whitepages.com is not likely to help with this type of information because it is not equipped with the information you want.
Reverse phone lookup directories put out quite a bit of time compiling information, double checking that it is as updated as possible, and maintaining it all in an organized listing so that it may be quickly used by people as needed.
A lot of this information collected is not that simple to locate and some of it they have to pay for in advance. For example, a legitimate, well maintained website will have to pay cell phone companies for updated listings of numbers. As with any business, it is only reasonable that you will have to hand over a small fee to gain access to their information.
The deal about the charge is it should be small and reasonable, for the most part around a dollar or so for a one-time phone number lookup and about 15 dollars for more long term subscription to the |listings|directory|service}. Any directory asking for a large charge for very little information retrieved should be avoided.
There are too many worthwhile directories out there to throw away time and money on inaccurate resources, so make sure they actually have the information you need before handing over your money.