Find Someone's Email Address
If you are trying to get in touch with a long lost friend or potential client, the process can be a lot more difficult if you do not already have that person's e-mail address. Thankfully, there are a few tactics you can use to track that coveted e-mail address down. If you know a bit about the person, you may be able to find their address on various social networks. You can also try guessing the address based on other addresses from the same organization.
Contents
Steps
Using Tools
- Find That Email. [Find That Email] is an email finding tool with great accuracy. It's algorithms scans through 20 different datasets to accurately figure out a person's email address. It also has a feature called "Domain Search" that lists all the people, job titles and email addresses of anybody from that domain.
Searching Websites and Social Networks
- Visit the person's company or personal website. You may be able to find the email you're looking for by scouring the company website. This is especially effective if the person runs their own business. Check the "About," "Contact," and "Staff" pages to see if the email you need is listed anywhere.
- If the website is run by the person you are trying to find an email for, visit whois.net and enter in the website address. The person may have their email listed in the contact information.
- Perform Google searches for the person's name, location, and company. You can find a lot of information with the right Google search. If the person you are looking for has a fairly unique name, you might be able to find that name simply by doing a search for it on an Internet search engine.
- Include a modifier like "email," "email address," "contact," "contact information," or "contact me."
- Search Twitter for the person's name. If you can find the person on Twitter, you may be able to find their email in their profile. At the very least, you'll have a way that you can attempt to get in touch with them.
- You can perform a Google search for "person's name + twitter" to find their Twitter handle easier.
- Search for the person's LinkedIn profile. LinkedIn is another good resource for finding someone's email address, depending on their privacy settings.
- Search for "person's name + linkedin" to quickly find their LinkedIn profile, if they have one. Use the company name as well if their name is common.
- Check Facebook and Google+. You're less likely to be able to contact the person directly using these sites, as you'll typically need to be friends with them before you can see their contact information. Still, it may be worth a shot to find the person on these sites and even reach out through them.
- See Find People on Facebook for tips on finding a specific person on Facebook when you don't have much to go on.
Making an Educated Guess
- Find email addresses for other people in that person's company. If you can find a few public email addresses for employees at the same company as the person you're trying to find an email for, you may be able to infer their work email address.
- Look for sales rep email addresses, tech support addresses, and other email addresses for individuals at the company that may be public.
- Check the LinkedIn page for the company itself and see if any of the employees there have publicly-available email addresses.
- Look for press releases if possible. These often contain the email address of the PR representative.
- Examine the email addresses that you find to look for a pattern. If you are looking for any type of “official” address, like a work or school e-mail address, the username is likely to consist of elements from that person's first, last, and possibly middle names. Many companies assign email addresses to their employees that follow a common convention. Look at the email addresses you've found and see if you can come up with the address you're looking for based on what's there.
- For example, if the emails you found were formatted FirstLast@company.com, try plugging the person's name into that format.
- Perform a web search based on the email you come up with. This can help you determine if the address is legitimate before you test it out. You may find links to their social networks, in which case you'll know you have the right email address.
- Try some different structures. You can try a few more common company email structures, which may be used if the person shares a name with someone at the company or they are allowed to choose their own usernames:
- first_last@company.com
- firstinitialLast@company.com (e.g. brubble@company.com for Barney Rubble)
- last@company.com
- FirstMiddleinitialLast@company.com
Determining Possible Permutations
- Open an email address guesser. There are several email address guesser services available online. One of the easiest to use and free options is http://www.guesser.email/.
- Enter in the person's first name, last name, and potential domain name. The guesser will generate addresses based on this information. If you don't know the domain, start with the person's company domain (@company.com), then try other popular domains like @gmail.com or @icloud.com.
- You can enter multiple domains by putting a comma in between each one.
- Click "Create Email" button. This will open your email client with all of the generated addresses added to the BCC line. This will allow you to send the same email to each message without the person knowing that you sent it to every permutation of the address.
- Compose a personal email. Make sure that your message is friendly and clear, so that you aren't mistaken for a spammer. You are likely not supposed to have this email address, so you'll need to be polite so that you don't get ignored.
- Send the message and wait. The message you compose will be sent to every address generated by the website. Wait to see if you get a response from any of the messages. Most will bounce back with an "undeliverable" message, but one may get through.
Warnings
- While there are perfectly valid reasons for needing to track down someone's e-mail address, you should also know when to quit. If, for example, you are trying to find the personal e-mail address of an attractive acquaintance, classmate, or random match-up at the bar, you probably should not put too much effort into it. If that e-mail address is not out for public display or you cannot secure it from a mutual friend, you could be viewed as a stalker and wind up getting yourself into a heap of trouble.
- It should go without saying, but stalking is a crime. If you intend to use the information in this article for the sake of cyber stalking someone, you can be criminally prosecuted when caught.
