It is getting easier and easier to find out who a phone number belongs to. Before the internet, you had to visit your local library to find out the information for a phone number. Today, there are numerous websites that can provide this type of information. Most of the basic ones are free and use a search spider to find the information from a variety of sources. You might want to compare the information you get form these websites to each other. Since they may pull form different sources of information, the results may be outdated or incorrect. There are also pay sites that can provide this information. They typically provide more information about the owner than just name and address. Some will provide background checks and other information for their fee.

Almost any search or general service site will most likely provide a link to perform these lookups. Not only do websites like www.MSN.com and www.Yahoo.com provide directories for your typical search (where you are trying to find the phone number for a specific company or individual), they also allow you to do a reverse search. There are a few sites dedicated to only doing reverse phone searches. You can often do regular and reverse searches, you can find out area codes for different cities in different states and they even have links to telephone directories in other countries. International numbers, though, can be tough to find information for. Different countries have different laws regarding this type of information. There is a website that can provide some assistance. You can go to www.countrycodes.com and find out what country code belongs to what country, and they provide tips on international calling.

Toll-free numbers (those phone numbers that begin with 800, 888, etc.) are easy to find. Most of these numbers are for a company and usually these companies want you to find them. You can search for these numbers at the same place that you look for regular numbers. In the free searches, however, you must remember that the number has to be a listed number to be found. The same goes for fax numbers. You can find out who holds a fax number as long they have allowed it to be used in a public directory. A reverse cell phone number lookup is almost impossible to find for free. The sites that perform these searches typically have to pay the cell phone service provider for access to their database.

Here is one free informational site that allows you to check out the free lookup options at this www.freecellphonelookups.com website

I've done some more research and discovered it is exteremly hard to find cell phone numbers for free. The above article walks you through your free cell phone lookup options better than anyother place on the Web.