By Swastik K Agrawal

If you want to know the details of the person behind any phone number, a reverse phone lookup is your perfect solution. It's a quick and easy process in which you just supply a phone number and the directory returns you the name, address and other details of the person who owns the number. It works exactly opposite to how a conventional directory does.

A reverse lookup can be handy in many cases. For example, if you want to know who the unknown numbers in your significant other's cell phone belongs to, if you want to know who is leaving you unwanted calls, if you just want to verify an address or maybe hook up with an old colleague; a reverse phone lookup can be helpful in all of those cases!

There are several sites that offer you with an option to perform a reverse lookup: some of them are free while others are paid. With free sites, you can only look for landline numbers. Free sites utilize the numbers in public records and their databases and not up-to-date and their information not really reliable.

On the other hand, paid sites can return you details about the owners of a cell phone number, landline number or any kind of number you want to! They usually have millions of records in their database and they have to pay to the cell phone companies to access those records. Thus, to keep their services alive, they ask for a nominal fees from you too which, in my humble opinion, is totally worth it!