Online phone directories, like the White and Yellow Pages, can be a great source of information when you need to find a person's or company's address fast. But what happens when you don't have a name to look up? After all, when a name is the information you are looking for, an ordinary phone directory isn't of much help. In addition, neither the Yellow nor the White Pages include mobile phone numbers... making the job of tracing someone's identity, when all you have is a telephone number, all the more difficult.
In those cases, a more effective and less time-consuming way to track down the cell phone owner's information is through a specialized reverse cell phone directory. Before going into some details about these reverse phone lookup services, I would like to briefly address one of the most common questions people have about cell phone directories. Specifically, is there a free reverse cell phone directory somewhere on the Internet?
Back in 2004 there was some discussion about creating a centralized cell phone directory akin to the White Pages. Each cellular phone service provider would contribute to such a common database of mobile numbers and their owners, and then it would be made available to the public for free. However, the greatest concern about privacy resulted in the idea to be abandoned. Additionally, the fact that telemarketers would gain easy access to cell phone numbers was unacceptable.
Since you are generally charged for each call you answer on your mobile phone, the above concerns do have a lot of weight.
That does not mean that such a directory has not been created - in fact, it has been done. The only issue is that putting such a directory together requires a lot of financial and time resources because records must be compiled from hundreds of various commercial and official sources. As a result, such a service - if legitimate - will charge a fee to recoup the costs.