These days, looking up a cell phone number is easy if you know how to do it. But millions of us do this the hard way every day. Unlike years past, when you could just open a phone book and find your friends, today’s free directories provide almost no information on cell phone numbers. Maybe a shipping company or location, that’s it.

Instead, the Web has brought with it a new solution. This is in the form of a ‘reverse phone book’. These websites collect information from public and government records. With careful management, they use it to keep up-to-date records of 98% of cell phone numbers. You can instantly find names, addresses, records, criminal records, marriage records, and much more with just a cell phone number.

Some of the uses of this type of information include:

1. Verification of historical records of possible new associates for criminal activities.

2. Spot strange numbers on your bill or on your spouse’s phone.

3. Find phone numbers of lost friends or family.

4. Find contact information of the people we want to meet.

5. Control your children’s friends

Because most of the population uses cell phones today, it’s nearly impossible to find these things in a regular phone book. In fact, privacy laws prevent phone companies from publicly listing cell phone numbers. You can think of telemarketing for this, some of which call your phone several times an hour through an automated voice machine. Think of how many plan minutes this would consume!

Reverse phone book websites provide all the benefits of a phone book without giving telemarketers information, since you need to know the cell phone number in question. These services charge a small fee for operating costs, but provide live help finding your information and refunds when it’s not available.

You should always start your search for a phone number by typing it into Google, Yahoo, or another major search engine. Sometimes the information has already been posted on a public website; if so, it will appear in the first results. However, spending more than a few seconds on this could result in hours of wasted time. This is why you should never spend a lot of time using the free phone number lookup.