You may want to look up a friend or family member. Perhaps you had a number and lost it. You may want to do a reverse number lookup to find the party behind that unknown number. Tap or click here to stop annoying robocalls. Regardless of your reasons, cell phone directories are out there if you know where to look. Also, the more information you start with, the more accurate your results will be. Here are some ways to find someone’s cell phone number without breaking out the big books.

1. Use a people search site/people finder tool

People search sites have been around for a while. They provide information on more than just phone numbers. You can find all sorts of public records on a person without having much to go on. True People Search is a free site where you can search by name, phone number or address. ZabaSearch works similarly, except you can’t search for someone by address. As with most “free” services, you’ll eventually hit a paywall and have to cough up at least an email address to get more details. You may also be redirected to a site that requires registration or payment. BeenVerified starts as a free site, but you’ll quickly realize that you need to sign up to get any information. Membership costs depend on your choice of subscription. If you don’t like the idea of your info held by people search sites, you can have it removed. Tap or click here to delete yourself from people search sites.

If you want to stick with a site designed to find people’s cell phone numbers, you have some choices. Spy Dialer boasts “billions of phone numbers” and lets you search by phone, name, address or email. ZLOOKUP and USPhonebook are free reverse phone number search sites that give results for people and businesses.

3. Social media may have what you’re looking for

If you can find the person on social media or are already connected, check their profile to see their phone number. Some people don’t provide this information, but you might get lucky. RELATED: 6 tricks to finding anyone on social media When you upload your contacts to a social media platform, you are usually provided with a list of those people’s profiles. That’s another place to check. Facebook requires you to enter your phone number for two-factor authentication, though you can make this data private. Tap or click here to see how.

4. Did you try Googling it?

Back to the basics. Try typing in a person’s name and any other information you may have into Google and see what comes up. You can do the same with a phone number. You will likely get hit with countless similar names and numbers, but the more info you provide, the easier it will be to narrow things down. But be careful when doing a Google search for businesses. Sometimes the results presented are malicious. A recent example was when people searched for Home Depot through Google. The top result was a malicious ad. Tap or click here for details on this devious scheme.