Many places online advertise “FREE cell phone lookup services”, but in actuality the only really beneficial no-cost directories to be found are of landline phone numbers. Why is this? Because for a very long time, landline numbers have been openly published. The phone companies consider cell phone numbers to be private and are reluctant to release those numbers. Also, your cell phone bill is usually based on time used. Knowing that their customers don’t want to waste usage time, the cell phone companies refuse to publicly provide cell phone numbers.

So, you won’t get much useful information from these “FREE” services if you’re looking for unlisted or cell phone number information. You can get some very general information from some of them, but not the name and address of the owner of the number.

Recently I desperately needed to put an end to some obscene phone calls from a sicko unknown caller. For about a couple of weeks, I had been receiving calls from a no ID number. When I answered the phone, the caller said nothing but started panting and making sexual grunts and sounds. I found these calls frustrating, annoying and a little scary. The frequency of the irksome calls began to escalate on a daily basis.

Finally, I did call the police who told me that there wasn’t much they could do since no actual crime had been committed. The police did tell me that I could call my phone provider and give them the exact time of the call or calls and that my phone provider would probably give me the originating phone number. This information did help somewhat, but since the calls were coming from a cell phone, I still didn’t know who was making the aggravating calls.

Armed with the cell phone number of the persistent culprit caller, I fired up the old PC and began to search the Net for the elusive “Free Cell Phone Lookup Service”.

Googling for a “Free reverse cell phone lookup service” is a maddening counterproductive activity, that is if you’re looking for real information like the identity and address of an obscene caller. Here a click, there a click, everywhere a click, click… I clicked every “FREE” Cell Phone Lookup Service that I could find only to discover a dead end with each subsequent frenzied click of the mouse. Basically, I got a large dose of the Online Runaround, something almost everyone has probably experienced at one time or the other. Every so-called FREE service that I tried eventually led me to a paid service costing from $4.95 up to $14.95.

Some free cell phone lookup websites do exist, but they offer only limited information about a number. These sites “decode” cell phone numbers to help you determine the issuing location, carrier, and other publicly available information.

In general, you’ll be able to find out whether the number belongs to a cell or a land line, what mobile service provides the number, and which city and state the cell phone number comes from without ever paying… but the actual name and address of the registered user of that cell phone number won’t be available (unless you get extremely lucky). I wasn’t lucky!

After a couple hours, I finally got the message, the only way I was going to put a stop to the stinking phone calls was to use a premium paid cell phone lookup service. Paid reverse Cell phone directories are created manually by large companies who collect the information from various services. The process of compiling and creating these databases is very expensive and time-consuming which is why there is a charge for the information. I guess they have to pay their bills too!

A word of caution… A large number of sites have popped up on the Internet offering cell phone lookups for a fee. Considering the limitations of these services, the fees can be very steep. Some companies actually have tried to “skip” the process of building cell phone databases. These services just give you a list of services that sell these lookups and disappear when you ask for a refund. That money will just disappear, and you’ll be back to your search… so why not go “straight to a proven source” from the beginning?

There are a number of reputable Reverse Cell Phone Lookup Services online that offer a money back guarantee service. The best services give customers free search assistance and are backed by a 100% no-quibble, no-strings attached guarantee. You’re either satisfied or you’re not…and if you’re not, then you don’t pay. Period!

After checking with Phone Reverse Lookup Review and ConsumbersGuide.Org,I used Reverse Phone Detective with very satisfactory results. Considered the Grand Daddy in reverse cell phone search, their website has the largest phone directory in the U.S with approximately one billion records. I gave Reverse Phone Detective a whirl and bingo, bingo, bingo; they found the cell phone caller name and address. Additionally, they found his race, age, marital status, civil records, and criminal records.

This was really more information that I was looking for, but now I had the information I needed to confidently put a stop to the annoying phone calls. I called the guy up right from the phone he had been calling me, he evidently recognized my caller ID because I never heard from him again. If he had answered my call, I could have told him that I have completed an investigation and that I now know who he is, to stop calling my number, or I will take immediate legal action. Knowledge is power isn’t it?

While free cell phone lookup services may be appropriate if you’re only looking for very general information (like the phone issuing location), you won’t find much information that will help you if your object is to identify the psycho who is calling you repeatedly. If you’re serious about determining who is calling you, then use a premium paid service.

In conclusion, there are some “Free Cell Phone Lookup Services” on the Net, however these services provide only limited general information. For the most part, their claims are misleading if you want to find the accurate cell phone owner information. There are rare instances where you might actually get the owner’s name and address, but as a usual course of events you will be directed to a paid premium site for that pertinent information.

About the Author

Lanie Dills is the creator of the Squidoo site Whose Phone Number Is This. If you liked these tips on how to find a cell phone lookup service, why not get the full insider scoop on ways to trace cell and unlisted numbers to the true owner of the phone number. Empower yourself right here: Whose Phone Number Is This.

There are several reasons why you might want to find out who owns a telephone number. Maybe you found a number on you caller identification that you don’t recognize, maybe you’re getting nuisance calls, and want to track down the source, and in most cases, maybe you found a number on your partner’s phone, and are getting a bit suspicious of who called!
So, how do you go about finding out who owns the number?

First off, as a long shot, just type the number into Google and hit search - you never know, you might get lucky, especially if it’s from a business number, or if the caller has put their phone number on a website somewhere.

Your next stop should be a free reverse phone number directory. There are several available on the internet such as whitepages.com or whowhere.com - just do a search. Once you’ve found a suitable site, enter the entire number including the area code and hit “Search”. If the number is a published land line, you should get the information you want, including the name of the owner and the entire address of the owner.

Sometimes this can be enough to get results, and you don’t need to go any further. However, in most cases, you’ll need to try a slightly different approach.

Quite often you will be unsuccessful because the number belongs to a mobile phone. There’s no central database of cell phone numbers, so most free reverse phone lookup sites can’t return information about such numbers. In addition, if the number is a land line, but is unlisted or non-published, you won’t be able to get the info you need either.

There’s little point trying lots of different phone number lookup websites in order to find who owns a Telephone Number, either. Generally they all use the same databases, so if you don’t find the number at one, then you’re very unlikely to find it anywhere else. Ultimately, if you really need the number, you’ll probably have to use a paid site, but it’s not always easy to know which one to choose. That’s where a Reverse Phone Lookup Review site can help.

Mao, Jessica. (2008, March 11). Sprint White Page Or Sprint Cell Phone Directory, Does It Exist?. EzineArticles. Retrieved March 15, 2008, from http://ezinearticles.com/?Sprint-White-Page-Or-Sprint-Cell-Phone-Directory,-Does-It-Exist?&id=1033540

In this article, the author explained the current cell phone directory structure and the laws on mobile phone directory, the author further explored all ways on how to make Sprint reverse cell and Sprint Reverse Phone Number Search.

Free cell phone number search - what a popular word. Yes, there are many free phone number search sites,  but they’re for residential or business phone number lookups. These days, it seems everyone is trying to tie FREE with something is NOT free at all.

 I spent some hours checked out exactly what the top 10 Google search results claimed to offer such a service for FREE really means. What I found very interesting is, most of them are trying to associate the free cell phone search with Reverse Phone Detective.  Admitedly, Reverse Phone Detective is a good reverse phone lookup service provider,  they spent millions of dollars to acquire and maintain its  cell phone database,   it would be crazy for someone to advertise its service for  ”free”.

Cellular phone services are not free, you know cell phone calls cost money, cell phone numbers have no caller IDs, cell phone numbers are private and unlisted, but why there are so many claims on providing free cell phone number lookup?

Congress is drafting a bill to ban all 3rd party mobile phone directories.  Cell phone providers such as Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T have all stated they respect the privacy of cell phone numbers.  Verizon calls a public cell phone directory as “stupid idea”. Read the story.

With this question in mind, I checked out the top 10 Google search results claimed to give free cell phone number lookup, here is the list, you will see the same list if you go to Google and make a search.  Let me go through the list  one by one and expose this free cell phone number lookup scam.

The  very first one of the free cell phone number search result is www.nationalcellulardirectory.com, Who is nationalcellulardirectory? In the website’s description, it calimed “Cell phone numbers directory search - FREE! Free cell phone directory. Reverse cell phone lookup”.

Let’s do a reality check on National Cellular Directory:

Is it really representing a National Cellular Directory? According to whois, this domain is registered very recently through Godaddy, the identity of the website owner is hidden (hmmmm), the website only started service one month ago.

At their website, it has “Find Cell Phone Numbers”, I put the name, city, state, click the search, no results but it connected to “Enter Your cell phone number”, I put a cell phone number, it showed me this: “Our records indicate that you have not registered your cell phone number with us. To continue your search for xxx xxxx please register below”, they want my cell phone number, my name, my city, my state! Of course, this is NOT free cell phone number search, it has a huge cost - telling the public about your private cell phone number! it is a cheap trick and worse than these Free Cell Phone Giveaway schemes given by some others to collect cell phone owner information. Who would want to register their cell phone number with them to search for others? Do you think the database is accurate? I don’t think this website would help anyone to find the cell phone information. However, it does have half page of advertisements on “Reverse Phone Lookup” - you can see know what this website is all about.

#2 spot is also occupied by nationalcellulardirectory.com with a different twist - tricky title Free Cell Phone Directory.

#3 spot is www.freecellphonelookups.com with the title of “Free Reverse Cell Phone Lookup - Cell Phone Number Search And Reverse Lookup”. What the Free means? (a) Allow me to put a cell phone number and click the Search Now button (b) it DOESN’T offer free search result and the search result is actually connected to Reverse Phone Detective , free cell lookup? nope, the cost is $14.95 for one time search and $39.95 for unlimited number search.

#4: As you can see, under Sponsored links, the top one www.cellphonedirectory.com, it said “FREE CELL PHONE SEARCH”, really? Let’s check it out. I put the cell phone number in, it connected to Intelius! Free? Nope, the cost is $14.95.

#5: The second sponsor on Free Cell Phone Number Search is cellnumbers.com, at cell numbers.com, put the phone number in, it is connected to Reverse Phone Detective! Again, not free.

#6: The 3rd sponsor on Free Cell Phone Number Search is: www.cellnumber-id.com. Went to the website, this website is also connected to Reverse Phone Detective.

#7 “Free Cell Phone Search” Sponsor - PhoneCallDetective.com it is just a new blog talked nothing but Reverse Phone Detective.

Reverse Phone Detective maybe the best cell phone lookup provider, but certainly it is NOT free, go check it out yourself on Reverse Phone Detective. Besides Reverse Phone Detective, there are some other good providers such as ReverseMobile or Phone Number Scan.

The author analyzed top 10 Google search results on “Free Reverse Cell Phone Lookup” . It turned out all of them are not free at all.  Most of them would trap you to get into their website and put your OWNER cell phone number, leave your personal information, then let you to make a search of others (no guarantee of results or any). The full report .