There are lots of reasons why you would want to look up a phone number and find details about the owner. Some of the reasons include...

-- Get back at a prank caller

-- Find out someone's address

-- Check out a strange number on your spouse's phone

-- Catch up with an old friend

-- Research missed calls

... And so on. They are all legitimate requests.

So do services exist that allow you to look up phone numbers and find information about the owner? The answer is yes. In fact, we now have databases of millions of numbers (together with information about each owner) that can be used.

Before the internet, the only way to look up a phone number was to hire a private investigator, which could easily cost hundreds of dollars.

So... Do You Have To Pay Money For These Services?

Well, it depends what you want to do. If you're looking up a landline number (i.e. someone's home phone) then a free service should suffice. The reason is that landline numbers are in the public domain and freely available, so it is easy to compile a database of them.

It gets harder if you want to lookup cell phone, mobile, VoIP and unlisted numbers. The reason is that these are not freely available (that's why we don't have phone books for them), and to compile a database of millions of cell phone numbers would take tens of thousands of dollars.

Fortunately, services to look up cell phone numbers are still easily affordable, and are a tiny fraction of what a "private investigator" would cost. Some of them charge a onetime cost for an unlimited number of searches, while others charge yearly fees. But because many of them allow you to perform an unlimited number of searches, you could investigate every single number on your spouse's or child's phone if you wanted to.

Apart from the much larger database of cell phone numbers, another advantage of paid directories is that they give you much more information about the owner. While free directories only give you name and address, paid directories can give you name, address, occupation, relatives, neighbors and more.

If you've been getting annoying (prank) calls from some number, then you'll want to find out the owner of that number. You might even want to find out their address so you can pay them a visit if they live close enough to you. And the good news is, this is actually pretty easy to do thanks to reverse phone lookup services.

In fact, all you need is the area code and the seven digit number of the caller, and you'll be able to find out a wealth of information about the owner.

How To Search For That Number...

Before anything else, you should try to search for the phone number in a free directory service. Just enter the number and area code and do a search. If the number is a land line (i.e. not a cell phone number) and it is published, then you'll get the name and address of the owner.

The reason you'll run into problems with free databases is because they only cover land lines. If the number you're looking up is a cell phone, they will not give you a result. This is because there is no central database of cell phone numbers, and making a database of them is a timely and costly procedure (therefore they need to be charged for).

The bottom line is that you'll only be able to lookup cell phone numbers in paid directories. Luckily, most of them are very affordable anyway, and good one's come with a 100% guarantee. The policy is usually if the database returns no results for the number you search for, then you get your money back.

How Premium Directories Work...

Good services will give you accurate, up-to-date information for millions of cell phone numbers. These databases are not cheap to update and maintain, but the prices are still very low. And once you pay the cost of admission, that gives you an unlimited number of searches, and you can do it confidentially from the comfort of your own home.

The most important thing is the guarantee. The last thing you want is to pay money and get the same results you would get in free directories. Plus, there are a number of junk services around, that don't have very large databases. That is why on my website, I provide reviews of the best and worst services around.