Many sites on the internet allow Reverse cell phone lookup and some even claim to allow free lookups. Whether their claim is authentic or just a marketing gimmick to make you visit their site, is what we shall observe here.

Sometimes you may find an old cell phone number in your wallet or diary which you cannot place or have forgotten who it belongs to. Other occasions may see you being constantly bothered by a prank caller, or finding an unknown number in your significant other’s address book. In such cases, you may want to avail the services offered by reverse phone lookup organisations.

If the number belongs to a landline, then it is not much trouble to find the listing, as it will always be there on a public telephone directory, and all you need to do is sift through the pages to search. But, if the number is a cell-phone one, it becomes a problem. This is because there are a number of laws in place in order to protect the privacy of clients who purchase cell phone numbers. These laws allow the cell phone providers to not disclose information about the purchasing party to the public. This is the reason why you will not find any cell phone directories anywhere.

In order to access cell-phone records, you need to pay the corresponding company a certain amount for access to their database. What makes it simpler is the existence of several on-line organisations that pay humongous amounts to these companies for information, compile and catalogue the collected data into their on-line database, and then offer users on the internet options to search through the database. A single search will usually cost you about $14 and a package which provides you with unlimited searches for one year will cost you about $39.

Certain websites are in existence which will claim to offer free reverse cell phone lookup but they will either redirect you to a paid site or are phishing websites. Beware that since the phone companies charge for each accessed database, there is no way that you can actually obtain a free access, no matter what the website claims to provide you.

These paid services keep your identity in complete confidence and do not even reveal that you conducted a search. Your personal details are fully secured and you can also ‘opt out’ of the database, which will result in your personal information and your phone not being listed on their websites.

Some of these websites also offer background checks on people, providing parameters such as sex offender records, police records, divorces, adoptions, bankruptcies, and much more. Why this is useful is because in case you are receiving prank calls from a person who has previous charges, then you can yourself go to the police station and press charges against the same person. In fact, some websites offer the option to press charges directly via the website, whereupon clicking the link redirects you to the authorities.

Therefore, you realise that there is nothing called free reverse cell-phone lookup, although such a service can be availed for a small fee.