Free Reverse Phone Number Lookup, What Info Can You Get?

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Free Reverse Phone Number Lookup - Not a Useful Service!

Are you looking for a free reverse phone number lookup service? While some sites promote this type of free service, the reality is that it doesn't exist in a truly useful form; read on to learn more!

How do reverse phone lookups apply to prepaid wireless cellphones?
Prepaid cell phones are becoming more prevalent in the mobile phone market. Using a reverse phone lookup on a prepaid cell phone number may yield much less or even misleading information about the owner of the phone compared to a phone number that is attached to a contract wireless cell phone plan. There are both informational and legal issues that are quickly visible when a reverse phone lookup is performed on a prepaid cell phone.

What information is available for prepaid reverse phone lookups?
Unlike contract cell phones that sometimes require a credit check and always require positive identification in the form of a drivers license, passport or other photo ID, a prepaid cell phone doesn't require any of these documents. There are a few different types of prepaid cell phones. Most major carriers provide some form of prepaid cell service to their customers and often require the same identification information as contract plans. In this case, using a reverse cell phone lookup on these types of numbers would provide correct information.

However, other prepaid wireless phones can be purchased off the shelf of a convenience store and activated online or over the phone using an automated system. In this case, the only information available may be the registered name or date of birth, which may or may not even be a real date provided by the customer. When registering a phone with a prepaid wireless carrier, it is not uncommon for people to use a friend or relatives' address, a P.O. Box, or even a fake address since minutes can be reloaded by purchasing prepaid cards from retail stores allowing them to pay in cash. Often those who are trying to hide from debt collectors or the law will do this to hide their identity.

Is it possible to find the owner of a prepaid phone using reverse cell phone lookup?
Answer: Sometimes! When signing up for services like Boost Mobile, Cricket, TracFone, or Virgin Mobile, customers are asked for their contact information. Since many people use these phones as their primary phone number, this number will be used when they sign up for other things such as surveys, grocery store loyalty programs, online forms, text message discount services, and even social networking sites such as Facebook and Google+. If that is the case, their identity may be tied to their wireless cell phone and can be found in identity directory web crawlers that are often used for data mining by reverse phone lookup systems. Most of the time consumers are truthful with this information unless they are purposely trying to conceal their identity.

How much information is available to different types of reverse phone lookup services?
You will quickly discover that there are various levels of reverse phone lookup services available on the web. There are many sites that claim to offer free reverse phone number lookup services. These free reverse phone number lookup sites often can only give you the city location of the cell phone carrier. This really doesn't provide a lot of information since this information can be found by using an area code lookup table. For a nominal fee, a more in depth lookup can be done providing the registered name, carrier information and any registered address, if any, that is available. If further information is required, identity investigator services are available that take a bit more time but can provide a good deal of information about the number in question and cost a lot more. This is similar to hiring a private investigator that will scour the web and local records to obtain information about the phone number in question. Of course, don't get me wrong, there's certainly no harm in trying out a free reverse phone number lookup service. If you're not happy with the results, you can always try something else!

Sources:
http://www.iinfosearch.com/services/name_address_from_cellular_number.htm
http://blog.bestpeoplesearch.com/2009/08/reverse-cell-phone-lookup-for-pre-paid.html

Steven Farrell is the administrator of ReversePhoneLookup.org, a site where you can perform a reverse phone lookup for as little as $1.

Free Reverse Phone Number Lookup - Not a Useful Service!

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