When an unknown email address appears in the inboxes, you may want to know who the sender is. Perhaps it’s an intriguing email that sparks your curiosity or a suspicious message that raises safety concerns. The need to trace an email owner also arises in business or professional scenarios, where verifying potential contacts is necessary for an authentic and effective connection. 

This guide will walk you through proven methods to find out who owns an email address, based on our hands-on testing of various tools with a dozen different emails. We’ll also share clever tactics on how to use them to uncover as much information as possible.

Best ways to find out who owns an email address

Based on our experience, it can be tedious and time-consuming to find information related to an email address manually, especially if it has little digital presence. Therefore, we recommend you start with some handy tools. Designed to streamline the searching process, they leverage advanced data crawling and matching mechanisms to quickly and efficiently provide you with relevant information.

If you are willing to invest time in a manual search, use Google and various social networks to search for public information associated with the email address. 

1. Use a reverse email lookup tool

A reverse email lookup tool aggregates publicly available data to find information about an email address, such as the owner and associated online accounts. Both free and paid services are available, while paid ones tend to have a higher success rate of tracing the correct email owners and offer more details.  

Premium people search services recommended

We’ve reviewed and tested several popular people search sites, and here are two that stood out: BeenVerified and Spokeo.

BeenVerified

BeenVerified is a reputable people search tool that allows users to enter an email address and get detailed reports within minutes. It can show you the potential owner and their possible photos, phone numbers, emails, address history, job, education, assets, as well as social media accounts and websites. 

BeenVerified proved highly effective in our test. It has identified the owner of 9 out of 12 emails we searched, except for two that were highly spammy and one personal email address that turned out to have minimal online activities. 

The results are generally informative. However, we did notice that some email reports are incomplete, likely due to the way that people search services structure data – based on names and unique elements like date of birth. We suggest you search further for a background report when available, which includes extensive details and additional categories such as relatives, associates, and court records.

Spokeo

Spokeo works in a similar way. By searching an email address, you may view the possible owner’s name and age, and uncover potential social profiles. Unlocking Full Results will provide the person’s contact, address history, social profiles, court records, and more. 

For our sample email addresses, Spokeo returned a definitive person report for 5 out of 12 and delivered a lot of insights. Even though it doesn’t always track down the exact email owner, it excels in discovering associated social networks. By scanning over 120 sites, it finds potential profile matches based on the email address and potential usernames. Click each link to view the profile and you may gather additional clues like bio, photos, and posts to facilitate further investigation.

Freemium alternatives to try

If you don’t want to pay, consider the reverse email lookup tools below that offer complimentary access to certain details. Note they still include premium results that require payment.

TruePeopleSearch and That’sThem are our top picks for providing a wide array of information at no cost. That includes the owner’s name, alias, address, phone number, emails, relatives and associates, and possible business relationships. They are ideal for a basic initial search, but the effectiveness might be less than desirable – among 12 email addresses tested, only 4 yielded results.

Epieos is an advanced tool specialized in collecting and analyzing public information. By looking up an email address, you may check:

• Whether an email address was leaked in data breaches, and where it was found. 
• Associated Google account, photo, and services like Google Maps, Calendar, and Google Plus. These can be valuable hints about the owner’s online activities.
• Social networks or websites where an email address is used, such as Skype, LinkedIn, GitHub, Esty, and Flickr. It may pull account details with the owner’s name, photo, and even location. Some data is not available for non-subscribed users.

Found a possible photo linked to the email address? Right-click it and click search image with Google to explore the image sources and other similar pictures. 

Epieos offers two plans for individual users: Member (free) and Osinter ($32.85/mo.), differing in the level of access and features. Certain modules such as LinkedIn, Flickr, and Trello are exclusive to subscribed users.

Overall, our experience of using the free tier is satisfactory but not exceptional. It successfully retrieved information for most tested email addresses, with some notable findings such as Google accounts and photos and Skype profiles that showcased the owner’s name, photo, username, city, and gender. However, in most cases, the results were limited and not very helpful in identifying the owner.

Besides, the search process is somewhat frustrating, as it will require completing two relatively complex CAPTCHAs each time to unlock the results.

Generally, these options are cost-saving alternatives to premium email lookup services but may compromise on the usability and depth of information.

2. Search the email address on Google

Since reverse email lookup tools mainly source their data from public sources – though some use proprietary databases that are not widely accessible – you can utilize those resources to search manually. And Google is the most powerful tool at your disposal. 

Search the complete email

Start by entering the email address into Google to look for related websites and pages. That might surface profiles, posts, or blogs where the person has publicly shared his/her email addresses, or specific communities or pages where the email address, especially if it’s associated with scams, has been mentioned by other users. 

If you face an overwhelming number of irrelevant results, which is common when searching an iCloud or Yahoo email, a smart strategy is to enclose the email address in quotation marks. This directs Google to look for only the exact phrase.

You may also come across results from people search sites that directly tell you who the owner is.

When searching for a professional email, the domain (the part after @) typically indicates the associated organization, so its websites or LinkedIn may appear in the results. And if the prefix corresponds to a full name, e.g. john.doe or johndoe, you’ll likely locate the specific page about the individual.

If you don’t find direct results, looking up the email domain alone can identify associated businesses more straightforwardly. Once you know the organizations tied to the domain, consider reaching out and asking if they can confirm who the email belongs to.

Search the prefix

If searching by the complete emails led nowhere, try the prefix. You may discover related online accounts this way, as many people would use the same email handle for social media. This works like a charm when we search emails where the prefix doesn’t resemble a name, consisting of random characters and numbers. We were able to locate relevant TikTok, Pinterest, and Flickr profiles.

You can also refine your search by placing the email prefix in quotation marks to filter exact matches, adding site:sample.com e.g. facebook.com or linkedin.com to search within specific websites, or combining both operators. If Google suggests similar queries, explore each one for additional leads.

3. Search the email address on social media

Finding associated social media accounts can be an effective way to confirm an email owner. Although Google is efficient in locating numerous Internet properties, it cannot access all content on social media sites. For more detailed information, you can directly search within the social networks such as Facebook, X (Twitter), Instagram, and LinkedIn. You’ll need the account to log into those platforms.

First, try searching the email prefix. You might discover profiles with a matching display name or username. For professional emails, LinkedIn is the go-to place to check. Search the prefix and the company name which you can determine by looking up the domain. If the prefix matches a full name or at least hints at a first or last name like john or jdoe, you’ll be more likely to find the right profile. 

Searching the raw email address didn’t work very well in our case. Major social media platforms don’t support finding users by email address or phone number^[1]. For example, the Facebook search feature doesn’t recognize the email as a single string but breaks it down into phrases. This leads to broader and less accurate results. Conversely, Instagram, Twitter (X), and LinkedIn will look for the exact email address, so there are often few or no outcomes.

In certain situations, a full email search can be fruitful. For example, the user has used the email address as the display name, included it in the bio, or it was mentioned in a post.

Conclusion

Whether you’re using automated tools or performing manual searches, there’s no guarantee of obtaining accurate and comprehensive results. And even if you manage to identify the owner, it’s still essential to stay cautious. The results may not reflect the true sender, particularly if the email account has been compromised or impersonated. Always be wary of clicking suspicious links and avoid giving away sensitive personal details unless you’re sure of the recipient’s identity.

FAQs

Reference:

1. Control who Facebook can suggest your profile to based on your email address or phone number. Facebook. Retrieved August 5, 2024, from https://www.facebook.com/help/131297846947406↩