How to Find Out Who Owns an Email Address: Your Full Guide
Cindy Ellis - January 10, 2023
Occasionally we can get strange emails in our inbox, even with the best implements in place nowadays to keep spam at bay. Sometimes, though, we can get emails that truly bother us in some way, and we would like to know more about who sent them. Is it possible to find out who is truly behind an email address?
While it can be a complex matter, there are techniques you can use to find a person’s identity behind an email address. In this article, we’ll list some simple and effective techniques you can utilize to start your investigation today.
Tips To Find Out Who Is Behind an Email
So, you have an email from a stranger and want to figure out just who is behind it. Here are a few tips and tricks you can do to initiate a search for a mysterious email address to try and ascertain the person’s identity.
However, be aware that none of these techniques are 100% foolproof to work properly, and, in some cases, several of them might have to be used together to get any traction in the search process.
1) Check Your Contacts
If you have many contacts, whether you are a social butterfly or have a business with a huge number of clients, then you most likely have a pretty intense list of digital contacts. So before you initiate anything listed in this article, first see if the email in question is someone you added to your email contacts a while ago.
Also, be aware of what appears in the other portions of the email, such as the subject line. Many will include their full name in this line if they are cold-sending an email to someone they have never previously contacted before.
Additionally, the email address itself might serve as an indicator of who the person is. An example of this is a business email, which can contain someone’s full legal name, depending on their business. Examples of this are initials of their full name or deconstructing their name in a shorter fashion if they have a long or particularly complex name.
All of this, of course, presumes that the person sending the email in the first place doesn’t wish to hide their identity. Someone that is looking to harass you or scam you in some manner is usually going to be less forward than this.
2) Find the Domain Name
A quick way of scaling down a search for an email address is to view and verify the email’s domain name. An example of this is an email sent by an account linked to a higher educational institution, which will normally have the .edu extension listed at the end of the domain name. This tells you that the email was sent from that particular institution, which can hone your search considerably.
To double-check this aspect, press “read original message” on your email client and see what the DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) is listed as.
3) Find the Sender’s Geolocation
If the domain name doesn’t look correct or is something you don’t recognize, the next step is to consider the location where the email was sent from. Open the header of the email fully and look for the section that says “from” followed by numbers in an “xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx” format. This is the Internet Protocol or IP address, which can help determine the sender’s geographical location.
Once you have this number, copy and paste it into an IP address search tool on Google or any other search engine of your choice, and you should get an approximate area of where the email is coming from. That said, the sender of the email could potentially “bounce” their IP address via the usage of what are known as proxy servers, so this step isn’t always going to lead to accurate results.
To check this aspect, press “read original message” on your email client and see what the sender policy framework (SPF) is listed as. The IP address should be readily visible in that section for you to copy and paste into an IP search.
4) Use a Search Engine
The next step in your search might be one most do first. One of the best ways to initiate a search for a person behind an email is to use a search engine, such as Google. Within minutes you will be able to see the public sites and even social media platforms where the email address appears. This can give you more clues to determine the identity behind the mystery email address.
One additional tip is to use other nontraditional search engines, such as DuckDuckGo, as they can feasibly dig up other pieces of information that Google or Bing doesn’t care to index. A thorough search with free and readily available internet search tools is a great way to start your email address investigation, and it doesn’t take long at all.
5) Search Social Media
Many types of social media allow you to copy and paste the email address in question into a search bar to let you find any profiles that use said email. Facebook, in particular, is one social media site that lets you search for someone this way. However, be aware that this is a very hit-or-miss tactic depending on the privacy settings the individual is using, but it can be another tool to further hone your search. Also, be aware that many social media sites generally don’t allow this kind of email search; LinkedIn is one such example.
6) Contact the Domain of the Email
If you’re having issues with a person harassing you over email, or they simply won’t answer you back, and you desperately need them to, a last resort can be to contact the company that owns the email domain.
This is a last resort option, as it will usually take time to verify the individual in question, and it would have to be an especially grievous situation (such as matters of harassment). Otherwise, the company might assume that you are phishing information yourself. As you can see, this option is complicated and not a good one to use if you don’t want other parties involved in your affairs.
Use a People Search Tool
The techniques listed above might lead you to find the identity of the email address you are checking out, but it’s not always the case. There are many factors to keep in mind. Many social media sites, for example, allow in-depth privacy settings to keep search engines from indexing email accounts. If the person behind a strange email is savvy enough to take advantage of such things, searching for them will be a challenge. At best, you might not find much helpful information at all.
There is hope, though. The best step you can take to determine the identity of a random email address that is harassing you in some way is to take advantage of powerful, modern reverse search tools.
With reverse search tools, like the ones provided by Information.com, the power is in your hands to cross-reference the entire internet for the data you need to track down your shadowy email-based assailant. In the span of just a few minutes, Information.com’s powerful reverse search tools analyze multiple streams of publically-available data sets to hone in on what matters in your search for the truth.
Your time is valuable. The person contacting you over email under a veil of anonymity doesn’t believe that, but it’s true. Don’t waste your life and mental energy doing things the hard way. Instead, harness the power of reverse search techniques and get to the bottom of things fast.
Final Thoughts
It might seem shocking to some, but harassment via email is still an often-used method to provoke and disturb people nowadays. Sometimes the subject matter of these shadowy emails can be so deeply personal that you don’t want to involve other parties at all. That said, taking matters into your own hands is challenging in itself, and it can seem insurmountable if you don’t know what you are doing.
Your time, energy, and personal safety are all valuable. You deserve answers now, not later. Why leave things to random chance when you can access powerful search tools that can save you pain in the future? We think the choice is clear.
