It used to be that everyone had a standard phone in their home and searching for a number or address simply required opening the white pages and searching for the name. This has become more difficult now that cell phones are widely used 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 landlines, a lot of numbers may come up without an identifying name and there are ways for callers to prevent their details from coming up. Reverse phone lookup services have responded to these changing demands to provide a very valuable service to resourceful phone users.
There are two typical functions for these services.
Searching for Names
If you are getting calls from someone and only a number comes up on your ID, or you need to figure out cell phone callers, reverse phone lookup directories can assist in finding the name listed to the number in question. Just by typing in the number you will have access to whoever is behind the phone calls in question.
People looking for such services include those who need to check up on a number frequently phoning their spouse or children's cell phone, since there is no public directory for cell phone numbers. Other people may use this when they want to find a name registered to a landline that is unlisted. Whenever you have a number but aren't sure who it is connected to, a reverse phone lookup directory can help.
Locating Addresses
The other typical purpose is to locate an address for someone, whether you know the name of the person or not. Once you plug into the information linked with a certain number most directories will give additional data as well, which may include the address of the landline or the address listed to a cell phone number.
This may not be a common need for some people, but it does have its benefits in quite a few situations. Such as a parent needing to find a teenager who has run away or is still out well past curfew. If they can find phone numbers from the teenager's bedroom or cell phone a lookup directory could quickly tell them addresses as well as names of places the child may be at that time.
More common situations may be looking for addresses to send out party invitations to your child's peers. If you have a phone number you can get their address and easily deliver the invite without calling and tracking down other busy parents.
Lookup websites can also deliver access to other various types of information, including income brackets or previous addresses, and one site even gives a map with an general pinpoint to the business or home's location.
There will be a nominal price for any legitimate reverse phone lookup service, but if your business or personal life requires certain data it is more than worth the payoff in the end. The charge is necessary because this variety of information is not easy or completely free to research, compile, and store, so issuing it as needed to others such as you must also collect a charge to make up for such serviceable expenditures.
There likely will never be a public directory for cellular numbers, and even if there were it is probable a lot of the numbers would be unpublished as is the case with many home phone numbers today. The only way to obtain access to such phone numbers is to pay a minor fee either to complete a single number search or to join a lookup directory if you will be using the service on a regular basis.