Verizon, Spring, T-Mobile and AT&T all fought against the cell phone directory created by Intelius.  They said it was just too much information gathered about people without their consent, despite the fact that it was compiled in a legal way.

One Verizon representative put it bluntly.

“Stop it,” said Steve Zipperstein, vice president and general counsel of Verizon Wireless, in a statement. “This is a violation of Americans’ privacy. People expect their cell phone numbers to remain private.”

He and other privacy advocates have a point, people use cell phone for the fact that they are so private.

But what about those people who want to find a cell phone number? It’s been nearly impossible without calling around or looking it up elsewhere.

After looking through Facebook, MySpace and Google, most people come up with nothing.  But because cell phone records are stored in public records, they are still easily available online.

This type of search is legal because it’s connected to government records.  Unlike other databases which hold onto just the number, it searches all kinds of things as well as public records.  And because it searches these records, it’s much more accurate when searching for telephone numbers since each time someone gets a loan or buys a house or goes to court their number is updated.

Most of the bigger cell phone lookups use public records to find phone number information, but they also use other sources of information.

Anytime someone opts into a list with their name, email or phone number, that information is stored, bought and sold far and wide. Those lists are available to anyone for a fee, so these new cell phone directory services charge you a fee to cover the big costs it takes to access these types of marketing lists.

The combination of those lists and public records make for a almost scarily powerful tool to find someone’s cell phone number online. Names, addresses, phone numbers, courtroom documents, even vehicle information that can be found readily via commonly used online services.

Anyone looking for find cell numbers online can tap into the same lists major marketers use to target their telemarketing campaigns.

The lists bring up a number of privacy concerns, not the least of which is who could really have your information. Those concerns have kept the major telephone service providers (cellular and landline) from making a complete database of all cell phone numbers where users simply don’t want their information out there.

On the plus side for such a database, is the fact that users could hide their phone numbers or opt out of the list, that isn’t, however, the case for current cell phone finding services.

So think twice about putting your name and phone number on anything you don’t fully understand, or you could end up on such lists in no time at all.

You can use the same services that people would use to find your cell phone number to see if you are on such lists. A cell phone number finder allows you to check up on your own phone number, but also to take yourself off such lists.

See how easy it is to find someone’s cell phone number @ http://www.cellphonenumberfinder.org

You could save your cell phone by stopping unwanted calls

There is no cell phone number book that publishes people’s cell phone numbers or make cell phone numbers available to the public to lookup cell phone numbers free.

The largest private cell phone number directory is at the Cell Phone Registry. This cell phone directory was once restricted to law enforcement and licensed investigators. Only recently has the National Registry of Cellular Phone Numbers starting giving people access to cell phone records regardless of their status.