Cell Phone Directory

Quite a bit has changed since my last post with regard to reverse cell phone directory searches. While a proper white pages style directory lookup service from the cellular service providers looks like it will never happen, leave it to good ‘ol U.S. ingenuity to bring you the current state of the art reverse phone directory. Demo it live by entering any valid phone number in the search box and then just click “submit!”:

ENTER CELL # HERE

The phone number database that powers the backend of this phone search tool appears to be destroy any of the free reverse cell phone directory search lookup tools on the internet. I’ve compared it with Anywho, Whitepages, Yellowpages, Intellius, Net Detective, and Webdetective. The first three offer free reverse lookups, the latter three offer paid reverse search access.

Anywho, Whitepages (even using the “Ultimate White Pages” option) and Yellowpages all offer limited telephone number information for listed landline phone numbers only. This is information that the actual telephone companies release when you call 411 directory assistance. There are no search options for wireless, cellular, unlisted, or even old-style analog pager numbers.

Intellius offers what appears to me to be a repackaged “InfoUSA” database. InfoUSA catered to telemarketers and mail-marketers in the late ’90’s, and there database looks a little stale to me (particularly for cell numbers). Net Detective & Web Detective (same company?) offer what looks like a combination of Intellius + some other public records system. Neither of these two have a particularly stellar customer satisfaction rating, so be advised there.

Does anyone have any information on where we stand on the Cell Phone Directory initiative that was supposed to create a nationwide 411 style directory for cellular, mobile, and pager numbers? If so, please drop me an email.

I snagged this domain years ago when it looked the reverse cell directory was actually going to happen. At the time, I was working as an intern at one of the larger law firms on west coast, and thought it might have some potential.

It was standard practice at the firm to employ private investigators to reverse cell numbers to learn who the owner of the account was. During the summer I interned there, I saw hundreds of orders for these CNA (customer name and address) searches go out to local and online investigators.

Even with ready access to subpoena’s to force the cellular provider’s to hand over the name and address info for essentially free, most of the attorney’s simply didn’t want to wait the 2-4 weeks to get the info through “proper” court channels. Imagine that!! I remember one of our biggest individual client’s for this type of data was a prominent California defense attorney who is still a regular on “Crossfire”, specializing in, you guessed it; PRIVACY ISSUES!!!

Anyway, it looks like the big push for a national database for cell/mobile/pager numbers has kind of fizzled out since then. I do remember that fairly recently some major privacy groups petitioned strongly against any kind of directory for cell numbers. Personally, I don’t really see what the problem is; the proposed directory was strictly to be opt-in - if you don’t want your mobile number in the reverse directory, just opt-out.

I’ll be making some updates to this site as good, current, phone number lookup search resources become available. Stay tuned!