Hello butcher7
In very simple terms, the answer to your question is "possibly,
maybe". You would probably like me to explain this a bit!
Unlike telephone numbers, there is no comprehensive central index or
directory of email addresses. There are a number of reasons for this:
partly it is to do with the internet's origins as a decentralised
peer-to-peer network; partly to do with the fact that the net is an
international collection of computers and equipment and therefore
different legislation applies on privacy and secrecy; and partly it is
simply due to the fact that anyone can easily create a new email
address at any time and there is no obligation to register it
anywhere.
That having been said, there *are* many resources one can use to try
to find an individual email address. A simple Google search for "find
email address" (://www.google.co.uk/search?q=find%20email%20address)
will bring up a host of directory and white pages style sites. None of
these are comprehensive or even come that close to comprehensivity,
but you may well have good luck with one or more of them.
Here are a few, culled from the results of the search query mentioned.
For each of them I will tell you the results of searching for myself
-- NB as a fairly privacy-conscious user of the internet for the past
ten years I would expect that my details would be difficult, but not
impossible to find.
Yahoo! People Search
http://people.yahoo.com/
The form towards the centre of this screen allows a search for email
addresses. Searching on my name I found an email address for me which
hasn't been valid since 1997.
WhoWhere?
http://www.whowhere.lycos.com/
One of the older net directories, now owned by Lycos, this has an
email search form at the very top of the main page. Again this found
an old, outdated email address when I searched for myself.
MESA, the Meta Email Search Agent
http://mesa.rrzn.uni-hannover.de/
Claims to be the "largest email address book worldwide". As it's run
from a German university one would expect it to be less US-oriented
than the American sites mentioned above. This one found a number of
email addresses for me, some outdated, some not. It seems to be a
fairly good meta-resource that works by querying a number of other
email search engines.
So from the above, you see why I answered your original question in
such a circumspect way. Given an individual's name you may or may not
be able to find them: the chances of locating their email address
depends on a multitude of factors, some of which I'll list below:
* How common is their name? If you're trying to find a "John Smith"
it's going to be very difficult, if not impossible, to find the
*correct* John Smith from the multitude of results returned.
* How long have they been on the internet? The longer an individual
uses the net for, the more likely they are to leave "traces" behind.
* How hard are they trying to hide? If someone takes active steps to
avoid being located on the net, then you're unlikely to ever find
them. Simply by avoiding ever using your real name online, and using
(for example) a made-up name accessed through Hotmail, one could
easily ensure that their real name and email address had nothing in
common at all.
I hope this answers your question -- if you have any questions please
feel free to ask for a clarification.
Regards
iaint-ga |
