How to Find Someone by Email Address Easily
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Ever needed to find someone but only had their email address? We’ve all been there. Maybe you’re trying to get back in touch with an old friend or a client, but their email goes unanswered. Or perhaps a mysterious message landed in your inbox and you need to uncover the sender.
Whether it’s for personal or professional reasons, finding a person with limited information can be frustrating. But no worries! In this article, we’ll explore several effective ways to help you find someone by their email address. With a bit of search work, you might find their name, contact info, social media profiles, and other valuable details.
Navigation Guide
To find the possible owner and their contact info:
To find the associated social media profiles:
More information that you might want to know:
1. Observe the email address & search
| Long story short: Identify the person’s name and company from the email’s username, domain, and signature. |
| What you might get: The person’s identity and contact information. |
An email address can provide direct clues about the owner’s identity. That’s because it often incorporates part or all of their name, especially in business settings, or includes a username they frequently use on other platforms. You may follow these steps to gather some basic details about the sender.
Start by examining the username – the text before the @.
Look for anything that’s like an actual name. For example, common formats may be a first name like Alexander or Alex, a last name like Johnson or Jo, or initials like AJ. Also, look for any numbers that could represent a birth year like 85 or 1987. Nicknames are commonly used too.
Then closely analyze the domain name – the text after the @.
If the address uses a popular provider like Gmail, Yahoo, or Outlook, you won’t get much identifying information. But if it has a custom domain tied to an organization, you can potentially discover where the person works or what groups they are associated with. Search the domain online to see if it’s under a specific company, university, organization, or other entity. This can provide useful context.
Directly search for the email address on search engines.
With these basic details at hand, you can search the full email address directly on search engines like Google or Bing. Simply enter the email address along with the company name (if available), and check for any identifying details. This can help you locate social media profiles, business websites, forum posts, or even public records. Remember to put the email address within quotation marks, since that would focus your searches on exact matches.
For more search hints, you might want to check our example of how to find the contact information from a doctor’s email address.
Sometimes the signature can reveal helpful information.
If you have emails sent from the address, check the signature block. It may include the sender’s name, position, and contact information, as this is common practice in business emails. There might also be the company’s website or address. Visiting the company website could lead you to an employee directory or contact page where you can find more information.
2. Use an email address lookup tool
| Long story short: Go beyond basic website searches by using a dedicated email address lookup tool. These tools access extensive databases for more thorough results. |
| What you might get: The person’s identity, social media profiles, and contact information. |
Outside of business contexts, email addresses are often less informative, offering few clues about the sender’s identity. In that case, the easiest way to find the possible owner is to use a dedicated email address lookup tool.
These tools act like a specialized search engine: you input the email address, and the tool searches for associated information, potentially giving you the owner’s name, contact info, social media profiles, and other details. There are a few decent choices to start your searches.
Our top choice: BeenVerified
BeenVerified is our clear favorite after trying out several email search tools, both paid and free. In our tests, it successfully identified the owners of 9 out of 15 email addresses, outperforming another popular option that only managed to find 6. That’s probably due to its access to a wider range of public data sources and more advanced skills in sorting data.
While a paid subscription is required, the time saved accessing its quick and insightful information makes it a worthwhile investment.
If it successfully locates a possible email address owner, you can go to their result page and check for more information. You might get their name, phone number, social media profiles, job & education details, and more.
Best free option: TruePeopleSearch
If you’re just doing an informal search, you can try a free platform before committing to a paid service. We recommend TruePeopleSearch.com: in our experience, it delivered more reliable results than most other free options we’ve checked out. Great for a quick lookup.
But free services have their limitations. They typically can’t identify the owner as reliably as paid ones because they’re working with a smaller set of data sources and may not invest as much in data analysis and arranging. So while TruePeopleSearch might help you find some basic details, it’s not a comprehensive background check.
Good for Gmail addresses: Epieos
Epieos.com is another useful lookup tool that can find many online profiles related to a specific email address. It can check sites like Skype, GitHub, Flickr, Trello, and more, potentially giving you profile pictures, names, and locations.
A particularly helpful feature that we like is its ability to find associated Google account information (for Gmail addresses), including Google Maps reviews, public calendar events, and profile photos. All of these may help you identify the email owner.
However, access to the complete data, including information from LinkedIn and Trello, requires a paid subscription (around $30/month). Also, it’s a little annoying that Epieos uses frequent and sometimes complex CAPTCHAs, requiring verification twice per search. Despite these drawbacks, it remains a fair option for quick checks.
How do email address lookup tools work to find owners?
Email address lookup tools are people search services designed to discover personal information linked to an email address. To achieve that, they rely on two key strengths: comprehensive data access and powerful data analysis.
In short, they first tap into extensive networks of public information sources, including government records, social media profiles, websites, and sometimes exclusive databases not easily accessible on your own. Then they cross-reference and arrange these data, compiling scattered pieces of information into easy-to-read reports. As we test different search tools, we always focus on how they perform in these two areas.
Learn more about where people search tools source data and how they work.
3. Search the username on social media
| Long story short: Search social media platforms using the email username to potentially find their profiles. |
| What you might get: The person’s social media profiles. |
Even if an email address doesn’t contain any obvious names, it can still offer clues. Normally, people tend to use the same username across different platforms, so that random email might help you find their social media profiles.
Try searching for the username part of the email address on different platforms. You might be surprised how often people stick to a consistent online identity. If you find matching profiles, you can start piecing together more details about who they really are.
Super Easy Username Search
To quickly find a bunch of social media profiles that are using a specific username, try a username search tool like Super Easy Username Search. It checks a wide range of popular platforms, including Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, and dating sites like Tinder, all in one go. This makes it a particularly good option if you’re looking for a convenient solution.
Note that clicking on the found social media profile links will redirect you to the actual pages. For a smoother experience, we recommend you log in to your corresponding accounts beforehand, as certain sites necessitate login credentials for profile viewing.
Search on each platform manually
If you have a rough idea of which platforms they might use, searching those directly can be effective. For example, if you think they’re on Instagram, you can search for their email username there.
Scroll through the search results, and keep an eye out for anything that looks familiar – posts, profile pictures, locations, anything that might match up with what you know about the person.
It’s worth mentioning that some sites, especially dating apps like Tinder, don’t let you search directly by username. A workaround is to try typing a URL like Tinder.com/@username directly into your browser, replacing “username” with the email address username. This can reveal if the profile exists. However, the exact format varies from site to site, and you may want to check each platform’s URL structure first.
4. Try a social media finder
| Long story short: Use a social media finder to see if any social media profiles are connected to the email address. |
| What you might get: The person’s social media profiles, identity, and contact information. |
If username-based searches feel like a shot in the dark, a social media finder like Spokeo can offer more targeted results. Instead of relying on similar usernames, Spokeo uses linked email addresses to find social media profiles, even if the usernames are different.
So even if someone’s email address is “JohnS@email.com” but their social media handle is completely different, Spokeo can still find their profiles. With access to over 120 social networks, including some popular dating sites, Spokeo casts a wide net to help you search for the information you need.
Beyond social media profiles, you can also find contact information right on the person’s details page. It’s a paid service, but many users find the powerful search features well worth the price.
Bonus tip: Find LinkedIn profiles via Outlook (and you don’t need extra tools)
Here’s a trick for finding someone’s LinkedIn profile using just their email address in Outlook. When you’re writing a new email, just start typing the address in the “To” field. As you type, Outlook will automatically check for any connected LinkedIn profiles and show them in the suggestions.
If a LinkedIn profile is connected to that email address, it will pop up in the contact suggestions dropdown. No need to actually send an email – just entering the address is enough to trigger the search. This method can be a quick way to find someone’s professional presence without directly contacting them.
Additional information that might be helpful
1. How to trace the IP address from an email address?
In some cases, you might be wondering if you can find more information about the sender, such as their IP address. This is a reasonable thought, especially in cases of fraud and other suspicious activities. People often want this information to try and trace the sender or gather more evidence like this user has shared online[1].
Although it’s possible to get the IP address from an email address, it may not be as useful as you expect.
Common mistake: To get the IP address from an email
The most frequently mentioned method to get the IP address from an email is to check its header. But after trying it, we found that it just gave you the IP address of the email service provider, not that of the actual user.
As a reference, this is how to get the IP address on the Gmail client.
- In Gmail, find and view the email in question.
- Click on the three-dots icon on the top right corner, and select Show original. (For Outlook users, the buttons should be View – View message source.)
- In the pop-up page, you’ll see the IP address that comes with the email.
As mentioned earlier, if you drop this found IP address into an IP lookup tool, you’ll probably find it belongs to a major email provider like Google or Microsoft, and the location might be a data center somewhere. That’s because the IP address you see is usually for the email server (like Gmail or Outlook), not the sender’s actual location.
Typically, when a user sends you an email, the email doesn’t travel directly from their computer to you but goes through the service provider’s mail servers. So you can only see the IP address of such servers. This is a standard practice for large email providers to protect user privacy and manage email traffic efficiently.
In theory, you might be able to obtain the sender’s IP address through IP logging tools. However, it might also not be accurate. that happens because many people use VPNs these days, which mask their real IP address and make it difficult to pinpoint their actual location. So we recommend you focus on other options as you try to identify the sender and report to appropriate authorities if you’ve suffered from financial losses.
Learn more: How to hide my IP using a VPN.
2. How to find someone’s email address (and other contact info)?
Whether you’re trying to reconnect with an old friend or reach out to a business partner, you might want to find their email address. Here are a few things you can do:
- Check their website or social media profiles: Often, people list their email addresses on their website’s contact page, “About” section, or in their social media bios. This is the easiest way to find it.
- Search LinkedIn: LinkedIn is a great resource for professional contacts. If the person has a LinkedIn profile, their email address might be listed or you might be able to connect with them and then message them directly.
- Use a dedicated email finder: People search platforms like BeenVerified and Spokeo are good for those who need quick results. These tools often search across the web and social media to find potential matches, but they require a paid subscription.
- Ask mutual contacts: If you know someone who knows the person you’re trying to reach, they might be willing to introduce you.
For more search tricks on finding someone’s email address and other contact information, you can read our detailed guide.
3. What to do if I can’t find any owners?
You should know that no search tool is perfect, and even the best email lookup services are no exception. There are several reasons why you might come up empty-handed after using such tools. For example, the person you’re searching for might be very private online, rarely sharing information publicly. Or the data source itself is not completely accurate.
When you’ve exhausted all other options, be creative and try different search methods. Keep in mind that some information just is not publicly available. And it’s critical to respect privacy and understand that you may not always find what you are looking for.
- r/Outlook [Jopkins]. (2024, February 11). Check IP address via Outlook? [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/Outlook/comments/1ao867y/check_ip_address_via_outlook/↩
There’s no guarantee you’ll find the information you’re looking for with the tools discussed in this article. They all source their information from publicly available data sources, such as county, state and federal courts, government departments, and police records, and those sources may contain incorrect or incomplete data. It’s illegal to use these tools to make decisions about employment, admission, consumer credit, insurance, tenant screening, or any other purpose that would require FCRA compliance. Read the Fair Credit Reporting Act to learn more....
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