The Evolving Technology of Reverse Phone Directories

How many times have you received calls from unknown numbers that you would rather not answer? It could be a debt collector, a long lost friend or someone you met last night and don't want to talk to again. These and other similar reasons are behind many uses of reverse phone lookups - the technology that aims to find a name match for the phone number. There are many types of phone numbers and depending on the type you need to use different directories.

Landline Numbers

These are numbers assigned to stationary telephones and are published in open source phone books. The online version of Yellow Pages has a reverse lookup option that can effectively search business and individual residential numbers. This is one of my favorite directories because it provides complete information for many business and personal land line numbers. Business info includes a map, nearby attractions and driving directions. Perosnal listings may include name, address and neighbors.

Toll Free Numbers

Toll-free prefix numbers (currently, 800, 855, 866, 877, 888) are used by many businesses for lots of different purposes - from customer support to debt collection and telemarketing. These are private numbers and standard reverse directories cannot trace them back to the owner. The solution is to use so-called complaint boards which are repositories of messages posted by real people who received calls from toll free numbers. 800notes.com is one of the most widely used such a website.

Mobile Numbers

This is where privacy concerns inhibit the development of reverse phone technology. Cell phone numbers are currently unpublished in U.S. and theoretically cannot be traced. Over 80% of phone calls we receive, however, are made from cell phones. In the past there were initiatives to create a 411 cell phone directory. They failed because cell phone carriers like Sprint, Verizon and At&t refused to release cell phone records for establishing a directory. As a result only private services can provide information on such numbers. There are many such directories and success rates vary a lot. From my experience tracing a cell phone number requires using more than just one private reverse phone lookup service - it is like carrying out an investigation of some sort.

Most of us have used people search on Facebook to find people by email. I have reconnected with so many old friends of mine through this feature. So, reverse email through Facebook is a great tool. You can try to run the same search with the phone number. It might work. And, of course, typing the number in the Google search bar is the first thing you should do before trying anything else.