Talk:Reverse telephone directory

Disputed neutrality
The neutrality of this page and related phone and people lookup topical pages is in serious question.

Obviously, the viewer can easily see the page is promoting a commerical service by the name of ANYWHO.

Repeated attempts to edit the REVERSE TELEPHONE DIRECTORY page to ensure neutrality have been spurned and thawrted by Wiki.

Which begs the question of potential financial renumeration or at least commercial bias of those in control of Wiki editing? What other motivatons can there be since there are many such companies offering equally quality services? Why limit the external listing to just one company? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.131.160.80 (talk • contribs) 13:55, 5 June 2007


 * I agree! The person controlling this page is a control freak who will not allow others to add appropriate content and links! The perosn must have a financial relationship with ANYWHO! There are many much better services than that one anyway! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.131.160.80 (talk • contribs) 13:24, 5 June 2007


 * Greetings. Thank you for starting a discussion. Please respond to my objection, that the site, http://www.phoneaddressdirectory.com that  71.54.161.157 has repeatedly added to several pages, is a subscription-only site which is, per Wikipedia's external links policy, "of limited use to most readers."  I object strongly to replacing a link to a free  website with one to a subscription-only site.  Would you like to add any free links? Whosasking 20:37, 7 June 2007 (UTC)


 * I will disaggree with your assertion the site located at http://www.phoneaddressdirectory.com is a fee only service. Having just visited that site myself and looked around, I found several FREE sources of information and searches there, all better than Anywho, IMHO. Apparently, you have not done your homework. So I must side with the previous writer that you probably have a financial stake in listing only one reference site. Otherwise, there would already be other sites listed by now. You doeth protest too much sir/madame. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.52.28.249 (talk • contribs) 23:58, 11 June 2007
 * All but one of the links from the reverse phone lookup page at reversephonedirectory.com point to intelius, a provider of directory-type services, some of which are free. Reverse phone directory lookups are not among their free services.
 * Just for kicks, Alexa rankings of Whitepages.com: 913. Infospace.com: 3,267. Intelius.com: 3,787. AnyWho.com: 6,309. Addresses.com: 8,816. reversephonedirectory.com: 34,189. In light of this, I've removed the link to AnyWho.com. Whosasking 03:18, 12 June 2007 (UTC)

Dubious content
The section Telephone directory was not in conformance with WP:SUMMARY till I rewrote it just now. The old version I have pasted below. It is quite long and US-centric; some info might be added to this article. The first paragraph is at odds with the definition given here: was there ever a reverse directory sorted by address rather than by number? If so it deserves a separate section. jnestorius(talk) 19:55, 10 October 2008 (UTC)

A reverse telephone directory, reverse directory, criss-cross directory or cross-reference directory, is a telephone directory in which the entries are in order by address (first by city name, then by street name, then by house number), and were used to find out the name of a subscriber with a particular address or to find the neighbors of a particular address. They were fairly common until the 1960s, as a separately published book, or sometimes included at the back of the regular telephone directory with each section on a different color paper. Printed reverse directories have become less common with the availability of telephone databases on CD-ROM and on the Internet, which have advanced searching features.

They are not well-known to the general public since they have generally been available on a limited basis to telephone companies or government officials, although genealogists and private investigators know which public libraries have them in their collection. In addition, some telephone companies have made the information generally available through little known services, such as the "2080 service" in Chicago (now discontinued), where a call to the exchange and the number 2080 produced an operator who would give the name and address of any other number in that exchange. But such services remain online.

Instead of looking up a number, a call to directory assistance (4-1-1 in the NANP) will give the same results if a book is not available. However, there is usually a significant charge for this.

In the United Kingdom, Ireland and many other countries it is illegal to perform a reverse lookup from a phone number, although some companies have attempted to sell reverse directories. CD-ROM telephone directories supplied by telephone operators are now sold in an encrypted format that allows only lookups from a name and address.

In Jersey, the paper phone book has a form of reverse directory with the phone number and then the name and address, for example: It exists after the regular directory in the phone book.
 * 712345 – Mr A Smith, 1 Any Street, Saint Helier
 * 712346 – Mrs B Johnson, 2 Any Street, Saint Helier

Australian directories
I do operate the Reverse Phones site (as someone pointed out in the edit comments), but I was not seeking to advertise my site. I was only seeking to add more information to the article -- I only linked to the 'About' page.

However, the TheInformationLives site is a blatant copy of mine. It even uses my API -- without formatting it at all. I will not edit this article again, as I'm not interested in getting into an edit war, but I'm a bit annoyed.

Lovek323 (talk) 03:41, 6 July 2010 (UTC)

Construction of useful free list after previous (for-fee) list was removed
As of Sept 2010 the only one of the sites mentioned on this page that would do a reverse lookup for free** in the US is Whitepages.com. For Canada, at least Canada411.ca will do reverse lookups for free. I suggest identifying/collecting a few more free resources here, until there are enough to be balanced, then creating a list of such examples in the main article. Otherwise, the article assertion: "There are several websites available which allow you to enter the landline number and with a simple click of the mouse you will obtain results such as the owner information, address and even the providing carrier." is unsupported.

**Or at least, the only site where a free reverse lookup tool could be found by me, after applying an average (not exhaustive) amount of time looking. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.106.110.145 (talk • contribs) 07:09, 13 September 2010
 * Wikipedia is not a forum for advertising nor for creating directories. I suggest not wasting time with efforts to the contrary. --Ronz (talk) 15:29, 13 September 2010 (UTC)