How Do I Find the Owner Of An Email Address? Options to Consider
Still not comfortable with opening some emails when they drop into your inbox? You are not alone; most people still delete promotional and suspicious emails without opening them. While some messages are filtered into your spam folder, some are indeed good, and could be offers that are potentially beneficial.
How do I find the owner of an email address? Could these emails be from senders with legitimate intentions? Those are just some of the questions that keep coming to your mind. The good thing is, you can; and there are ways to go about it. So, how do you find the owner of an email address?
Email IP tracing
There is a reason why more than half of email users across the world use Gmail clients-security! Google shields its email IP address database from the public; making it almost inaccessible to third parties. This makes it almost impossible to track the sender’s location; but you can always trace an email IP address by accessing your Gmail via the Chrome browser.
The sender’s location can be found when you open the email address, click on the three dots, navigate to ‘Show Original’ option, then click on it, and you will see the sender’s location under the SPF line.
Now, that is as far as getting the email IP address, but that is where the real work begins. Copy the sender’s email IP address, go to an IP lookup tool like www.ipaddress.com to conduct an ip address lookup.
The problem with this method is there is no guarantee of getting accurate results as the IP address may be masked, giving you misleading or generic results like that of the ISP which is not specific to the email sender.
Try Social Media Platforms
While social media email tracing might not be reliable, it may still be worth checking out. If you are lucky, you might successfully find an email address owner on LinkedIn, Facebook, X, Instagram, Threads, and more.
The results are not often reliable; and sometimes limited to “suggested” email owners. If the sender’s email is a professional one, it might be difficult to find the information you want on social media as most users register with their personal email address.
How Do I Find the Owner of an Email Address? Try A Reverse Email Lookup Service
A reverse email lookup service works by searching public databases, popular websites, social media platforms, and other places for information related to the owner of an email. This tool crawls these databases for required information, and then compiles them into a report.
With reverse lookup, there are free and paid options available.
Free Lookup Sites – offer limited information and may have hidden charges.
Paid Lookup Sites - offer premium services that may include, but not limited to names, physical address, phone numbers, social media accounts and more.
CONCLUSION
In a nutshell, the internet is a huge database of information; but the quality and reliability of the information you get depends on how and where you do your reverse email lookup.