You are in a situation of emergency and need to contact a person right now but there's no way you can get in touch with that someone.
What are you to do now? Page through a white pages directory or call a live telephone operator who has access to lists and lists of telephone numbers? But they are only of business and home telephone numbers.
Personal information like fax and/or cell phone number isn't on that list.
Are you at the end of your rope? Apart from the good old way of searching online, there now is new technology that is getting very popular: the reverse search.
You do not look for John Smith's number for instance, but you reverse the search by looking for telephone number 098-765-4321 to find out who owns that number.
The numbers of mobile telephones are not to be found in public directories because of the protection of the owner's privacy.
That way a cell phone user isn't bothered by telemarketers like we all are at our home lines.
The search for numbers of private cell phone is very complicated and costs time or money or both.
Those telemarketers aren't allowed access to databases with numbers of cell phone users, like they can have any home line number.
Nevertheless there are consumers and telemarketers willing to pay money for private information.
That means business and that's where companies with private listings come into the game.
It is almost impossible to have free guides of mobile numbers.
Can you imagine receiving heaps of calls every day from people who try to sell something to you or who want to do a survey while you are in a business meeting? Speaking of annoying...
If you really need to phone somebody but you don't know how to contact him, there is now a way.
With everything else failing, you can always reverse your proceedings.