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!