There may come a time when you want to locate a long lost friend or an old acquaintance. Your first instinct will likely be to access the Internet and try looking up your friend with the assistance of a general search engine. Although this is the logical first choice, if you have your old friend's phone number, you may want to try searching this information to start.

Did you know that you can actually use your friend's phone number to track them down? Believe it or not, but there is so much more to a phone number than it being a numerical code that enables telecommunication. Through a person's phone number you can actually find out some pretty valuable information including:

- Name

- Street number and address

- City

-State

- Zip code

- Phone carrier

What if the number I have is really dated and my friend no longer uses this phone number? Since you don't actually know the answer to this question, the best way to solve it is to enter their 10-digit phone number into a reverse phone search query. This can be found on a variety of websites that offer this service. If you are having trouble finding one, lookup "reverse phone trace" in a standard Internet search.

If you are not provided with any results, it could be that you entered the number in wrong or it might be unlisted, which means it is not published in a public phone directory. Double check to make sure all digits are where they should be. If they are, it's time to take your search to a reverse cell phone lookup.

Unfortunately, if you want to gain access to a wireless subscribers name and/or address, you will be subject to a small cost to access the directory that contains this information. The reason is the company had to pay and organize the data they have collected, so they charge a simple convenience fee to those who wish to gain entry.

This may not sound appealing, but a cell phone lookup may be your only option depending on the data you are looking for.