Are you trying to trace the owner of an email address but unsure where to start? This post will provide you with all the resources you need for a successful reverse email search. Let’s dive in!
1. Analyze the Email for Clues
Let’s start with the easiest and most obvious technique: read the email and see if you can find any clues!
- Check the Email address:
If the email sender has their account set up in such a way where their name is visible when they send emails, you’ll see it right away. - Check the domain:
All email address domain names are associated with the organization they came from. If the email you have is unique to a website or an organization, you can contact the domain owner to see if they can provide information for you. (This won’t work for public email addresses like Gmail or Yahoo.) - Find Email Signature:
Another way to see who owns the email address is through their email signature as many people have their name and other contact details included in the signature.
2. Epieos
Epieos is a free Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) tool for email and phone reverse lookup.
Its email lookup tool helps you verify if the email is linked to a Google account and if the person left reviews on Google Maps. Additionally, it shows which social networks the email address is used on.
Here is how to use this tool:
- Go to the Epieos website.
- Fill in the email address in the search bar and check the “I accept to Terms & conditions” checkbox.
- Then click Search.
Below is a report I generated using this tool. For free accounts, it reveals the name and profile picture associated with the email account. Additionally, it shows websites where the email has been registered, though it does not provide direct links to the profiles in question.
Note that the basic information is free. If you wish to get that extra information – which is blurred out in the report, you’ll need to subscribe to the service.
3. Spokeo
Spokeo is a paid people search engine. It lets you search for someone’s information by name, email, phone number, address, or social media username.
To look up an email address with this tool, just go to Spokeo, enter the email into the search bar, and click SEARCH NOW.
Spokeo will scour the web for information associated with your query. This might return potential social profiles associated with the email address, and background reports on potential owners of the email address.
4. Search Profiles Linked to the Email Manually
User profiles are a big component of many social networks. Depending on which platform you’re on or what the user chooses to display, you might be able to find out their profile by email – which might uncover their full name, location, and more.
Facebook is the biggest social network worldwide, boasting a daily active user of more than 1 billion, so the chances that the email owner has a profile on this platform are quite high. And the best about it? – Facebook lets you search directly on the website using email addresses. Here is how to do it:
1. Go to Facebook or open the app.
2. On the search bar, type the email address and press Enter.
This method only works when the email address owner connects the particular email address to their account and has the email address listed as public. If you can’t find any profile through this, move on to the next step below.
LinkedIn is the platform that is most likely to give you authentic personal information (e.g., full name, job history, education, etc.).
What makes this site different from others is that LinkedIn profiles basically represent a resume. Overall, people on this platform are more willing to fill in genuine information about themselves – which means you have a higher chance of getting to know the email address owner if they have a LinkedIn profile associated with the exact email address.
Although LinkedIn doesn’t provide an email lookup option on the site, here’s a workaround for anyone who is looking to find someone’s profile this way.
1. Go to Outlook and log into your account.
2. Click the People option on the left panel, then click New contact.
3. Fill in the First Name as you want, then click Add more and select Email address.
4. Fill in the email address and click Create.
5. Click the contact you created, then click LinkedIn to see if there’s any LinkedIn profile associated with the email address. (You’ll need to log in to your LinkedIn account and connect it to your Microsoft Outlook account if you haven’t done this yet.)
Depending on users’ privacy settings, their profile information may be viewable only to people they’ve connected with or it may be viewable to anyone.
If there’s no profile shown up, that means no LinkedIn account is connected to that particular email address. In this case, move on and try if you can get any luck on Twitter.
Same as LinkedIn, Twitter doesn’t allow you to directly search for users by email address. But here’s the workaround for this site: you can import your email contacts to Twitter and it will use them as suggestions for who to follow and voilà – the Twitter page registered with that email address will be available to you. Here’s how to do it:
1. Add the email to your phone contact. (You can do this by going to Contacts, clicking Add, and filling in the first name as you want, along with the email address. Depending on your phone’s operating system, the process varies.)
2. Log in to the Twitter app.
3. Go to Menu > More > Settings and Privacy > Privacy and safety > Discoverability and Contacts.
4. Turn on Sync address book contacts and grant Twitter permission to access your contacts.
You’ll be able to find Twitter profiles associated with email addresses on your Contact if the owners have allowed other people to find them by their email address.
Final Thoughts
Finding someone online using just an email can be tricky. If you still come up empty-handed after trying these people search tools, it’s probably time to just give up because some email addresses are built specifically for anonymity, and it would be a waste of time continuing your search.
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