It used to be that everyone had a landline phone in their home and finding a number or address was a matter of opening the yellow pages and searching for their name. Things have grown more complicated now that cell phones are widely used and many people do not even have landlines, and if they do their number may be unpublished.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 home phones, many numbers may appear without an identifying name and there are ways for callers to prevent their details from coming up. Reverse phone lookup services have stepped up to these changing times to provide a very useful service to resourceful phone users.

There are two typical uses for lookup services.

Searching for Names

If you are receiving calls from someone and only a number shows on your caller ID, or you need to figure out cell phone callers, reverse phone lookup directories can help you find out the name registered to the phone number of concern. Just by typing in the number you will be able to identify the person who is responsible for the calls of concern.

People in search of this service include those wanting to check up on a number frequently phoning their spouse or teenager's cell phone, since there is no accessible directory for cell phone numbers. Others may use this when they need to identify a name listed to a home phone that may be unlisted. Whenever you have a number but are uncertain who it belongs to, a reverse phone lookup website can assist you.

Locating Addresses

another common use is to find an address for someone, whether you know their name or not. Once you plug into the information linked with a specific phone number most services will give other sorts of information as well, which includes the address of the home phone or an address connected to 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. Such as a parent needing to track down a teenager who has run away or has not returned home well past curfew. If they can get access to numbers from the teenager's belongings or cell phone a lookup directory could quickly tell them addresses and names of locations the child may be at that time.

Other circumstances may be searching for addresses to send out party invitations to your child's peers. If you have the phone number you can access their address and get the invite in the mail without calling or tracking down other busy parents.

Lookup websites can also deliver access to other kinds of information, like income brackets and previous addresses, and one site even gives a map with an general pinpoint to the business or home's location.

There is a minor fee for any up to date reverse phone lookup directory, but if your business or personal life requires accurate data it is money well spent in the long run. The charge is unavoidable because this variety of information is not easy or completely free to research, collect, and store, so issuing it immediately to others such as you must also come with a charge to make up for these operational costs.

There likely will never be a phone book for cellular numbers, and even if they were compiled most likely the majority of the numbers would be unpublished as is the case with many home phone numbers right now. The only way to get access to such numbers is to pay a nominal fee either to do a single phone number search or to join a lookup service if you will be using the service on a regular basis.