In the past when you need to find a telephone number, the first thing to know was the person name, and probably his address, or if you want to know who called you (unidentified phone number on you listing) it was almost impossible.

Today if you know the phone number you can find information about the person that called you, this service name is reverse phone lookup. This service is online in most of the part (website that allow you to make the search for free or for a small fee) or delivered as programs (for the companies that pay for this service and have a subscription), so the time spent for obtaining this information is relatively small in comparison with the phone book.



This service is offered by telecom companies in most of the time, and they are taking money for this service, this can be additionally to your subscription or can be included in it. Because each telecom company has his own database and the service was limited, in time those companies start to exchange the databases between them for a better coverage. Another way for you to use this service is to have a pay-pal account or a valid credit card and to register to use the service.

A good phone lookup service will cover also the mobile phones this will give to you a better chance to find what you are searching, it can give to you a detailed information about the owner of that number and to make a fast check in the database.  For larger companies that are using reverse phone lookup is vital to have a quick response for the request.

If you do not use this service on a regular basis you can find over the internet sites that are allowing you to make a free reverse phone lookup.



Below you have a list of websites that allow you to make this operation, but you should know that their database can be out of date or to have a small coverage. All that you must do is to enter the telephone number and wait the result.

http://www.phonedetective.com/

http://www.whitepages.com/reverse_phone

If you intend to use it daily my advice is to pay a small fee and not to try to search on web, but you can give it a try.

On the other hand the law enforcement and emergency services can locate the origin of the call (location, name and other useful information). This is done using a VPN connection to a common remote database that contains all the phones numbers even the mobiles ones that is up-dated by all telecom companies.

At the end I must say this service is useful to find out how called you and maybe to make the call back, to find addresses of the persons that you did not see them for a long time and send them a letter, an invitation etc.