Normally, when you are thinking about someone you haven't haven't heard from in awhile or need to locate an old friend who you don't have a number for, you retrieve the phone book and look up their name. These days most people do not even take up room in their homes with the oversized paper phone books, but go to internet pages containing the same information and find what they need much quicker.
Yet things happen in in everyday life where they have a phone number and need to know who it is connected to. Phone books are designed only to look up the name of the business or person you want to reach, so offer little help. With cell phones being so popular these days it gets even more complicated since there isn't a cell phone phone book free to the community like with landlines. Clearly, technological advances have made another type of phone number directory necessary.
Reverse phone lookup functions just what its name states: it reverses the way you typically use a phone number listing. Rather than browsing for a name to find a phone number or address, you are using a phone number to retrieve the name or address of whoever the number is registered to.
A lot of people do not even realize this is available, but with the development of reverse phone lookup services it is now common by many businesses. It is also on the rise with people who become concerned with a phone number for for various reasons. It is a new sort of phone book that could potentially erase the demand for paper phone books in the future.
If you are receiving a high volume of unwanted phone calls, whether they are childish hang ups, rude pranks, or even telemarketers or collection services who don't clearly identify themselves but call at all hours, you can discover just who is making the calls by utilizing one of these directories.
You can go to yellowpages.com and use a limited reverse phone lookup website for the most basic information or for published home phone numbers, but there are two categories of information that cannot be accessed by any other source besides a more detailed service.
- * When you have a phone number but no additional information and want a matching name.
- * If you have a cell phone or an unpublished landline number and need a name, address, or other information. Whitepages.com is not likely to help with this type of information because it is not updated with the information you want.
Reverse phone lookup services spend quite a bit of time collecting information, ensuring it is as updated as possible, and maintaining it all in an organized directory so that it may be easily accessed by consumers on demand.
A lot of this information compiled is not that simple to locate and some of it must be paid for in advance. For example, a legitimate, well maintained directory will have to pay cell phone companies for updated listings of numbers. In turn, it is to be expected that you will have to hand over a nominal fee to have access to their information.
The key to the charge is it should be small and reasonable, for the most part about a dollar or so for a single phone number lookup and about fifteen dollars for more long term access to the |listings|directory|service}. Any site which requires a high fee for limited information retrieved should be avoided.
There are too many valuable listings available to throw away time and money on incomplete services, so make sure they can deliver the information you want before wasting your money.