How can I find out who an e-mail address belongs to?

Hi wynona,

There are a number of reverse lookup tools available which allow you
to trace someone via their e-mail address.

Netscape Reverse Lookup
[ http://www.netscape.com/netcenter/whitereverse.html?cp=tec_1b ]

Internet Address Finder
[ http://www.iaf.net/ ]

InfoSpace
[ http://ypng.infospace.com/info/ypv3/reverse.htm?&fromform=revphone ]

SearchBug
[ http://www.searchbug.com/peoplefinder/peoplebyemail1.asp ]


One caveat, however:  There is no guarantee that you will be able to
find the person to whom any given e-mail address belongs, if they have
taken care not to publicly associate any personal information with
their e-mail address, have unlisted telephone numbers or have been
certain to have their listings removed from all public directories.


Good luck!

missy-ga

---

Clarification of Answer by missy-ga on 06 May 2002 18:20 PDT

Wynona, 

It might be helpful to researchers in the future if you let us know
what tools you've already tried, so you don't get charged to receive
information you already have.

Sorry this didn't help.

missy-ga

I had already tried those tools, but had never used this site before,
so I thought it worth a try.  To: michaelquinlan-ga,  DUH!  If I had
wanted to e-mail them & ask them, don't you think I would have?

An obvious approach might be to email the person and ask them.

Although it is rare these days, sometimes a "finger" command can yield
information on a user. This does not work with most email servers
today, as administrators typically disable it, but it's worth a shot.
Check out tools like NetDemon (http://netdemon.net/) for a full range
of net tools.

Like the answer said, though, if a person doesn't want to be found,
they can seal up information fairly quickly. If it's a hotmail or
yahoo account, it's likely they supplied false information to the
account. It is possible that such information could be accessed with a
court order, but that's quite a hassle.

It's always worth searching for the e-mail address in search engines.
You'd be surprised how many people publish their e-mail address on
webpages, postings to fora, lists of conference attendees etc. You may
need to follow the leads this generates but sometimes they will even
handily provide their mailing address and telephne numbers as well!

When I was having problems getting a response to a complaint from a
British company, I managed to track down the names and addresses of
the CEO and the Public Relations Director this way, even though the
company's website didn't give them - got a personal apology from the
CEO within three days!

There may be some tools you haven't tried at:
http://searchenginez.com/reverse_email.html

Just an idea...You could also look up the last part of their email
address to see who the website they are using as a host is owned by
and start searching their database or website if they have one, to see
if the email address you are trying to find the owner of is listed in
those places.
-
http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois
-
I did that a couple of times to find the actual email address of some
people who were spamming my accounts.
-
I hope that helps a little.