Archive for the ‘reverse search’ Category

Before Hiring A Private Investigator, Consider Reverse Phone Lookups

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

Before the widespread implementation of the internet and electronic data, private investigators were necessary for many tasks.  You may think of a person who shadows cheating spouses when you think of a private investigator, but this is really only a small amount of what private investigators have historically done.

Some things private investigators may work on include researching harassing emails or phone calls, researching information regarding an insurance liability claims, help companies combat fraud, assist with child custody issues, and even help corporations run background checks or find people in relation to debts owed.

Before electronic information was so readily available, many people would hire private detectives simply to assist in finding people.  The reason people need to find other individuals can range from child support cases all the way to families wanting to locate a long lost relative.

However, with the research capabilities offered by the internet, you may not need to pay the expensive fees charged by a private investigator.  Instead, with a little time and effort, you may be able to find out everything you know online.

You can begin your research with a simple web search on the person’s name.  This may turn up some information about the person, depending on how involved online or in their community they are.
You can also use reverse phone lookups.  All you need to know is the full phone number that was, at any time, associated with a person, and you may be able to find a wealth of information about them online.

Many of these sites do charge a one time fee to be able to look up this information.  The sites requiring a fee tend to provide more information than those sites providing the service for free.  In addition, a free site will not have access to cell phones and unlisted numbers, while many pay sites do have this access.
Some of the things you can find out via a reverse phone lookup include name, address, known relatives, date of birth, occupation or company, names of possible neighbors, other phone numbers listed under the same name, and other addresses in the individual’s address history.

If you are patient and use a bit of internet know-how, you can find a lot of the information a private investigator would find without paying the high fees for a professional service.  Even though you may pay a fee for the reverse look up site, it will be a small, one time fee—and not an hourly rate!

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Why Do Some Sites Charge for Reverse Phone Lookups?

Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

If you have ever tried to find information out about a telephone number, you may have stumbled across two types of reverse lookup sites.  The first of these sites would have given you the name and address related to the telephone number for free, but the second type of site would charge you a small fee after assuring you that this information was actually available.

So why does one site charge for something that the other site gives away for free?

The answer is that both sites offer different services. The sites that offer a free lookup only have information about landlines.  Landline directory information is considered to be in the public domain, so it can be easily accessed by these companies and built into databases.  Websites like Whitepages, which already have these databases in order to provide a standard telephone search by name, can simply reverse their query logic to provide an easy reverse phone lookup for users.

However, cell phone numbers and unlisted numbers are not included in this public domain information, and are therefore not available through these free reverse lookup services.  Companies that offer cell phone information via a reverse lookup directory must spend a lot of time and money in order to compile cell phone information in order to provide valuable and accurate lookup services.

Companies which provide information about a cell phone number through a reverse lookup are not breaking any privacy laws or restrictions.  Although providing a tool that would give cell phone numbers to people who simply searched by a name is not legal, a reverse lookup for cell phone numbers is legal. In fact, it is the only search available to the public regarding cell phone numbers that is legal.

The reason this type of search is legal is because in order to conduct it, you have to already have the cell phone number.  This means that someone called you from that number and the cell phone number showed up on your caller id, or someone gave you the number.  Because of this, you have the right to know who is calling you or who the number belongs to.

Many sites that provide a reverse cell phone lookup service allow you to pay per search, or pay a one-time or annual fee for many searches.  The choice you make will be entirely up to the reasons you are choosing to search, and how many times you will need to search for different numbers.

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