Why Do Some Sites Charge for Reverse Phone Lookups?
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.
Tags: cell phone number, free reverse lookup, query logic, reverse lookup directory, reverse phone lookup, reverse phone lookups