REVERSE TELEPHONE
DIRECTORY
A reverse telephone directory (also known
as a greypages directory or reverse phone lookup) is a collection of
telephone numbers and associated customer details. However, unlike a
standard telephone directory, where the user uses customer's details
(such as name and address) in order to retrieve the telephone number of
that person or business, a reverse telephone directory allows users to
search by a telephone service number in order to retrieve the customer
details for that service.
Reverse telephone directories are used by law enforcement and
other emergency services in order to determine the origin of any request
for assistance, however these systems include both publicly accessible
(listed) and private (unlisted) services. As such, these directories are
restricted to internal use only.
Publicly accessible reverse telephone
directories may be provided as part of the standard directory services
from the telecommunications carrier in some countries. In other
countries these directories are often created by phone phreakers by
collecting the information available via the publicly accessible
directories and then providing a search function which allows users to
search by the telephone service details. |