How To Find Someone Online using Reverse E-mail Lookup

Jamie Read more August 30, 2018

A reverse email lookup can discover the person behind an email address. If you’re wondering who sent you an email and want to know more about them, you can use reverse email lookup among other tools to find out. With online dating and collaboration becoming more popular, so is wanting to know exactly who you’re dealing with.

How To Find Someone Online using Reverse E-mail Lookup

A reverse email lookup will scan the internet for mentions of the email address you provide. It works in a similar way to a search engine. It will use the email address as the search criteria and scour the internet for any mention of it. It will then list what it finds for you investigate further. It is possible to find names, addresses, social media accounts and all sorts of information from just an email address. It all depends on how much the person puts on the internet.

How to use a reverse email lookup service

There are lots of free reverse email lookup services online. Just search the term in your search engine of choice to see just how many. They all work much the same way. They provide a search engine, you provide the email address. They search for it and present you with the results.

Some service providers include Spokeo, Spytox, ThatsThem or InfoTracer and others. Some are free while others require payment. Annoyingly, they will search for free but will require payment to show the results.

I tried the top five free reverse email lookup services that appeared in my web search and didn’t have great success. Two were searching indefinitely, two couldn’t find any information and one only found a couple of mentions. As I used my own email address, I know for sure there are more than a couple of mentions. Your mileage may vary so they are worth checking out first.

How to find people online

If you don’t want to pay for reverse email lookups, there are other ways to find people online. People leave digital footprints everywhere they go so unless they lie for a living there will be something, somewhere with their name on it.

Google search

Other search engines are available. Perform an internet search on the email address or pertinent detail. If it’s online, it should appear here, either in the title or within the summary text with the search result. You can add “” surrounding the email address to narrow down the results if you get too many.

Social media

Most people use at least one social network so it is the logical next step. The same as you did with the search engine, use the search function of the biggest social networks and see what comes up. Social media is designed to connect people so the search engines are very good at finding them. You should then also be able to look at their profile directly from the result to see if it is really them or not.

Zabasearch

Zabasearch and websites like it specialize in finding people. You won’t be able to use an email address but if you can find a name or phone number, this site can help. It is one of the biggest sites of its kind in the US but not the only one. There are a few search engines that specialize in people like Pipl, WhitePages or ZoomInfo.

These would not be your first step in finding someone purely from an email address though as they all require a name or phone number. If your reverse email lookup gave you either of those, you can learn more from these kinds of websites.

Reverse image search

If your query is more about avoiding Catfishing than finding an anonymous emailer then you could try a reverse image search with their dating profile pic. Upload their profile image to Google and perform a search on it. If you want to verify someone is real before planning a date or just want to learn more, this is a great way of doing it.

If you find the same image elsewhere for other names or places, chances are the person is faking. If you only see the image as it relates to the individual, you are on safer ground. You will still need to perform due diligence but should have a better idea of who they are.

Reverse email lookups are one of many ways to find someone online. If all you have is an email address, they are definitely the best place to start. There are other options before you pay for a premium service though so it might be worth trying those before paying out.