Are you trying to do a little background check on someone but all you know about them is an email address? Don’t fret, it’s possible to find someone online by email when you know some search techniques and resources to use.

This article explains how to run a reverse email lookup to dig up information on people you know, strangers, and even yourself.

1. Read the Message for Clues

Let’s start with the obvious – read the email message and see if you can find any clues.

The first thing you want to check is their email address and email signature if they have one. Some people set up their email accounts with their names or social media usernames visible. So can you recognize the email address?

If the email address doesn’t ring any bell with you or you don’t already have an email from the person, you might want to send them an email, introduce yourself and explain why you’re looking for their name and simply ask who the person is. Most people would be fine to give you their name when you have a good reason for asking.

2. Google the email address

A regular web search engine like Google can also be helpful when you’re trying a reverse lookup to find people online.

All you need to do is plug the email address into Google to see what comes up. If the email owner has ever listed their email anywhere on the internet, such as their social media profile page or online forum, Google should be able to pick it up.

Since different search engines use different algorithms, you can also expand your searches with Bing or Duckduckgo for more results.

3. Search social media accounts

You can search for the email address on social media sites to see if you can find an account linked to it. If there is, you might figure out who the email owner is from their posts and profile information.

Websites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn let you search for users by email, so you can start your search with these sites.

If you still come empty-handed, read on and see what else you can try.

4. Use a Reverse Email Lookup

There are many tools designed specifically to let you enter an email address to see which names come up as being associated with it, called reverse email lookup tools.

Unlike general search engines that search lots of websites at once, reverse email lookup tools let you search by email address and return only people-related information like a name, address, social media profile, phone number, criminal records, and more.

For example, you can perform a deep search with Social Catfish by email. Once you find the right person, you can review a report that includes the person’s name, age, address history, possible photos, associates, etc.

5. Trace the Email Sender’s Location

We know that tracing the email sender’s location doesn’t reveal who the person is, but it can provide you with a general idea of where the email was sent from and might help you decide if the email is from someone you know of.

Received Headers have the following format:

  Received: from [computer name and/or IP address from sender]
         by [server name] (maybe Internet protocol too); date.

If only one Received line appears in the header, just copy the IP address and paste it into an IP address lookup tool to see the approximate location where the email originated.

In some cases, you might find multiple Received lines appearing in an email header. This happens when the email passes through multiple email servers, or in some cases, the email sender inserts fake Received lines to confuse recipients.

More tips to identify IP addresses in popular email services:

• If you received the email in Google Gmail. You should know that the service omits the sender’s IP address from all headers. Instead of the sender’s IP address, you’ll only find the IP address of the Gmail mail server in the Received line.
• If you received the email in Microsoft Outlook.com. You can find the IP address in the first Received header line.
• If you received the email in Yahoo, you want to check the sender’s IP address in the last Received entry.

Final thoughts

Still no luck? If after trying these email lookup techniques and tools, you still don’t have a clue who the email sender is, you might have to give up.

Knowing that anyone can create an email address using fake information, and if someone is meant to keep anonymous online, there is really no chance you can find out who they are.