If you receive on your phone persistent calls from unidentified people, from marketers, from pranksters, from a harasser or from any other kind of unwanted caller, and the calls are being made from a cell phone, you’ll have a lot of trouble trying to get a cell phone number look up to find out the callers identity. Cell phones, unlike other kinds of phones, are not part of the public domain, so there is no way that the directory service at 411 can do a cell phone number look up for you.

Although several phone companies have been discussing the idea of creating a 411 database to provide a service of cell phone number look up, so far they have done nothing. The downside of cell phone numbers not being in the public domain is that it becomes hugely difficult to identify an unknown caller. Such a situation can be very frustrating - doubly so when you want to find whoever is making your life miserable with their harassing or prankster calls.

Identifying unknown callers is done by a “reverse phone look up". It’s “reverse" because you start with a number and look for a name, - the reverse of a phone book. You can find on the web a few online services that have developed their own systems for providing a cell phone number look up, a jump ahead of the phone companies that are still discussing the problem.

The websites offering a cell phone number look up service charge fees, but you will find that prices vary widely. At the highest end, there’s a site charging 95 dollars for a single look up on a single number, with results available in 1 to 3 days. The best deal I‘ve been able to find on the web starts at $29.95 for a year’s unlimited look ups and has another option at $39.95 for lifetime unlimited searches.

Regardless of the amount you’re able and willing to spend on a cell phone number look up, you should look very closely at:

a) what the service provider offers for the price and

b) what it explains about its system and sources of information. This last point is very important because you need to be sure of the complete legality of the service’s sources of information and how it accesses those sources. To ensure an accurate look up result, the service provider should have access legally to a database that includes landlines, cell phones, business phones, pagers, toll-free and even unlisted phone numbers.

Whatever your particular need may be, whether it is: to stop a prank or harassing caller, locate a person’s exact address, find out who made those “missed calls" or investigate an unfamiliar number on your caller ID, see who owns an unlisted number, or even find an old friend from the past, a reputable cell phone number look up service can come up with the answer.