1. An automated method of providing information for an international telephone number, the method comprising: receiving an international telephone number from a user via a secure network connection; in response to receiving the international telephone number, consulting a table of prefixes in a centralized database of characteristics to identify a longest matching prefix for the international telephone number; in response to identifying the longest matching prefix, automatically consulting a location table in the centralized database to retrieve location information associated with the longest matching prefix; and in response to retrieving the location information associated with the longest matching prefix, automatically transmitting the location information to the user.