So you met a great guy at the club this weekend. You guys were really vibing, he bought you a drink, smiled a lot (great smile), and treated you like a lady the entire night. Things were going sooo well that you decided to exchange cell phone numbers.

Nowadays, depending on the situation, this could be a huge mistake! Giving out your cell phone number is potentially dangerous for a variety of reasons.

Cell Phone Number Whores -- Giving it Up Too Easy

Let's talk about this for a while. For some reason, people don't think much of giving out their cell phone numbers to virtual strangers, as if those seven digits are totally separate from themselves. They give out their phone numbers to online friends, in bars and clubs, and to new business contacts they meet in person and online without a second thought.

But did you know that anyone can look up your cell phone number with a cellphone reverse lookup and find out your full name, cell phone billing address, and other personal details about your life? All they need is your cell phone number, about 14 bucks, and a computer... and bam! They know where you live.

So that cute guy at the club seemed like a good enough dude at first, but what if he's a little "off?"

What if he has stalker tendencies? Do you ever think of these things? What do you really know about him and how he treated the last woman he was with? Absolutely nothing.

Regardless of his personal truths, he now has access to you whenever he wants. If he turns out to be the type of guy who doesn't want to go away, even after you've made it plain and clear that you are not interested, all he has to do is a reverse lookup to find your address and show up at your doorstep! How wonderful.

In addition to reverse cell phone lookups, a simple Google search of your phone number can sometimes bring up your personal details.

Valuable Tool or Are We Being Fooled?

Reverse cell phone lookups are looked at as a valuable tool by some, for example, many people use reverse lookups to find out who is prank calling them, to identify a strange number they are receiving texts from, or to track down a long lost friend.

But with the good comes the bad. An abuser can use a cell phone number to track down their victim's current whereabouts. A stranger can read your cell phone number off of the sign in sheet at the doctor's office and find out where you live. And that "great" guy at the club can stalk and harass you into oblivion, or until you move! So reverse lookups can be a potentially dangerous tool.

At this time, there don't seem to be any surefire ways of protecting yourself from someone finding your name and cell phone billing address online. But here are a few suggestions:

1) Call your cellphone provider and ask to be listed as "private." Basically, when you call someone on a landline with caller ID, your number should show up but your name should show as "Wireless Caller" or something similar.

2) Call your cell phone provider and change your billing address to a P.O. Box. Obviously you will have to go purchase a P O box from either the USPS or the UPS store. The cost of a P O box (anywhere from $23 to 100 a year) is worth the privacy. Depending on how your cell phone company works, you may want to just start fresh with a new cell phone number.

3) Be more cautious about who you give your cell phone number to. An email address (though also vulnerable in some cases --- we will talk about that in an upcoming article) may be more appropriate for getting to know a new person.

Some of these reverse lookups, like intelius.com , will allow you to make your cell phone information private to anyone who uses the service, for a fee of course. I personally cannot justify solving the problem by giving money to the same services who are the problem. It's up to us to be more proactive about protecting our personal information.

Welcome to the Internet Age Folks

This is the 21st century people, the Internet age. Unfortunately, nothing we do is really "private" anymore. Years ago it was no big deal to give out cell phone and pager numbers because the Internet was not as huge as it is now.

It's time for all of us to be smarter with how we manage our information.

Love Your Mildy Paranoid Friend,

Jade Balle