Finding a Person Behind Unknown Email: How-To’s

In a rapid digital world, most of us have already developed a sixth sense when it comes to spam messages. On the other hand, spammers may have updated their game as well, so sometimes, an email from an unknown sender still gives people the jitters — especially if it contains some enticing job offer.

In some other cases, you won’t have any reason to doubt the authenticity of the information provided, but would still be tempted to research some info about the sender. So, how do you find a person behind an unknown email? There are several tips and tricks for that, and a reputable email finder is just one of the available options. Let’s take a look at the main hacks in more detail.

Track the sender’s IP

In the header of your email, go to ‘received from’ option and click on it. There, you will find an IP address registered with this email. Later on, you can insert this address to Google search or use any other free IP tracing tool to determine the sender’s approximate location.

This procedure will only take you a couple of minutes, which is an obvious plus. Still, it does not give you much info about the sender. Most likely, that’s not what you wanted to research. So, let’s take a look at other, more informative options.

Go straight to Facebook

Facebook is one of the most democratic social platforms when it comes to sharing information. So, no wonder that it allows searching for people by their emails and phone numbers. You could try your luck and insert the sender’s address directly into the FB search tab.

If you have received an email from a corporate address, you may hit the company page instead of a person’s profile. This is not bad at all because you can take a look at all of their social networks — most businesses make this info public on their FB pages. The same goes for hitting a real person’s profile — you can get links to other social media accounts in the about box. When dealing with a business page, you can also check out page admins.

All in all, if the address you are looking for is registered with Facebook, this platform can provide quite a lot of information on the person (or people) behind it.

Move your search to LinkedIn

If your message has anything to do with business- or job-related offers, the most logical place to start looking is on LinkedIn. The biggest bummer is, this platform does not allow looking up people by their email address. On the upside, if you got an offer, this person or company must have come across you somewhere online. So, there is a chance you can find this person in your LinkedIn connections. Even if not, you can search for the sender by name.

If you succeed and find that sender, the next logical step is to explore the LinkedIn lookup service. There are plenty of browser plugins that can pull one’s contact details directly from LinkedIn. As a rule, those are paid services with a limited number of free searches. The biggest advantage of using such software is that you get the person’s email, phone number, links to multiple social media accounts, and many more. So, professional contact finding extensions often beat Facebook in terms of information.

Don’t forget to google it

This is probably the easiest step — something most people would start with. Simple as it is, a simple google search is not always effective. You can get lucky and find all the information you need right away. But, getting tons of search results that have nothing to do with your query is also possible. On the bright side, checking out the world’s most loved search engine will only take a couple of seconds, so you have nothing to lose if you try.

Just ask for more info!

Even if you cannot find much information on the email sender, there is nothing wrong with asking for additional clarifications. Usually, when you receive a personalized message from a recruiter or a potential business partner, this person will make some initial introductions. But, of course, don’t expect this info to be vast because no one wants to bombard people with data in their first email. So, if you are reading something you like, feel free to reply and ask for more details. Note that the more specific your questions will be, the easier it will be to get straight, comprehensive answers.

Finally, remember that each of these suggestions, taken separately, will not give you a full picture of the sender behind an email. The best way is to try a combination of these steps. This way, you should find plenty of information about the person behind an unknown email address.