In an ideal world you would have a database of all cell phone users and could type in a name and get the cell phone number.
This ideal world in reality doesn’t exist. All the “by name” cell phone directories you may have stumbled across on the internet will not work for most cell phone numbers, since these directories do not have information on cell phone owners.
The records of cell phones are not publicly available like landlines. You can readily search for someone’s landline since it is very likely to be on a public records database. This can be validated by trying one of the many people search engines available online.
So what is the difference between landlines and cell phones? The difference is that cell phone numbers are not public records. Be wary of any site that claims you can find someone’s cell phone number just by entering their name. Either the site is a scam or they have illegally gathered the information in their database.
Privacy is a major issue for most people, they do not want the same telemarketers that call them on their landline to also call then on their cell phone.
Now searching a database by cell phone number is another issue altogether. There are now reputable sites that have databases where you can search for a cell phone owner by entering the cell phone number. These “reverse phone lookup” allow you to find out the identity of a caller on your Caller ID or phone bill. Also you may want to know who is this number that has been harassing me!
It is plain to see why this service has quickly gained in popularity and there are now several sites available online where you pay a small fee to gain access to their database. Usually it’s a membership where you can make unlimited searches for one low nominal membership fee.
For more information see http://whoisthisnumber.net