In real life, however, the reasons for want to find a cell phone owner aren't as dramatic or as dangerous. Sometimes you just forgot to put in the name of the owner or missed a call, although sometimes the reason can be a little more serious, like being on the receiving end of a persistent prank call.

To find a telephone number is also called a reverse look up. It's the total opposite of looking up a name in the directory. Instead of finding a name on the directory, you will instead match a name to that mysterious number.

There many ways that you can do a reverse lookup, many of them you can on the Internet. You can lookup the number on the search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. Or you could sign up with the cell phone directory sites and look at the numbers there. Or you could also sign up with the reverse lookup sites.

Google, Yahoo, MSN

The search engines are you best friend for any search, especially for specific search terms. You can do the same thing with cell phone numbers to find a telephone number owner or to find a cell phone owner – if the number is on some indexed websites, you would find some leads on the identity of the owner. But of course, any information on the Internet is only as good as who gives it.

Free Cell Phone Directories

In recent years, there has been some movement towards creating online directories for cell phone numbers. The only problem is that these websites are membership-based, meaning members volunteer their cell phone number. Thus, you cannot expect to find very exhaustive information in them.

Paid Reverse Lookups

Although there are many website appearing to offer free reverse lookups, the fact is, you will have to pay for a cell phone number search. There's a very good reason why the professional lookup companies charge fees – they've paid their dues for an exhaustive and updated website. If you have a mysterious number on hand you can just type in the number and you can find information on the owner: his name, location and background information.

It's practically detective work on a cell phone number. Just enter the number and you can have a search result within seconds.

But you really don't have to fret about the charges, because you don't pay a penny at all unless if there's actual information on the number you're looking for. Some sites charge as much as $25 per search. Still, there are other reverse lookup companies where you need to pay a small one-time fee for an unlimited number of searches.

The good thing is that your searches are always kept in confidence – nobody will ever know that you've done a search to locate a cell phone owner. So, go right ahead and do a bit of detective work.