Finding someone’s name from their cell phone number is very important to many different people. When you get a call from an unknown number, you start to wonder who it is and how they found your details. But worst of all is the feeling of vulnerability: that someone knows who you are and how to get in touch with you… but you can’t do anything to stop it… until now.
Unlike public landline phone listings, there are no public cell phone directories. The government doesn’t store everyone’s cell phone number in one big directory for two reasons: The first is that cell phone owner information changes so much that it would be literally impossible for any directory maker to keep up. The second reason is that since cell phones are not tied to a central address, it would be impossible for the government to keep an up-to-date list of their owners’ locations.
Unfortunately, these two reasons have meant that cell phones have remained a very private affair for the 15 years that they have been popular. And for people like you and me, it’s been a hard pill to swallow because there just haven’t been any directories to search for your details. Fortunately, there are some new services that can give you the name, address, and even a picture of who owns a cell phone number.
Thanks to the Internet, new services known as reverse cell phone lookup sites have become increasingly popular. There are several of these services online now, and sites like Intelius and Reverse Phone Detective, which actually provide cell phone ownership details for most cell phones in the US and Canada. They work very intelligently and are incredibly accurate.
The companies behind these sites have been ingenious in the way they have made their services so reliable. Essentially, they bought public information from the government and advertising agencies, which contains cell phone information along with addresses, and then put those details together in a huge database. They then allow you to search that database by cell phone number, revealing up-to-date information for almost anyone in the US.