Social media platforms have become an integral part of our lives and the importance of their role in our personal and work-related activities is growing on a daily basis. Whether you are looking for that friend from high school or just want to learn more about a future employer, your search will inevitably lead you to one of the popular social media outlets.
But what can you do when an email address is all you have to work with?
Keep reading to learn how to convert someone’s email address into actionable information and what methods you can use to speed up the process.
Why Bother With Social Media Accounts
To put it shortly, social accounts are our online identities that reveal a lot about our friends, interests, likes and dislikes, and daily activities. They are small windows into someone’s life that can help you keep tabs on your children, screen potential employees, learn more about your love interest, and much more.
Social medial, however, should never be used to cyberstalk someone or exploit their personal information. Apart from being unethical, these practices are also illegal in the majority of world countries. Some social networks like LinkedIn, for example, also allow people to see who viewed their profile, so you should keep that in mind before you start clicking on your search results.
Social media searches are also one of the easiest ways of obtaining relevant information and learning more about any given person. Since you are basically homeless without an email address nowadays, everybody is bound to have one. In other words, emails will open up a whole slew of research possibilities for you.
Initial Techniques
Having someone’s personal or business email makes it easier to find out their real name. Once you have this information, you can start the so-called direct social media search by using the implemented search bars. All popular social networks have one and if you are patient enough to sift through thousands of potential results, you are bound to find your person of interest.
What if their name is not listed on their email account?
This complicates things a bit, but some of the aforementioned search bars can also be used for a reverse email address lookup and thus allow you to find all accounts linked to it. Of course, this only works if the email you have is actually linked to certain social media profiles.
Reverse Email Lookup Tools
A direct social media search is a method or a technique that lets you find somebody’s personal accounts using their name or email address. However, if this fails, you can also count on dedicated services and tools to help you in your search.
Some of the best options for the job include:
BeenVerified
BeenVerified was initially founded back in 2007 in order to make public records accessible to everyone. Over the years, it has amassed millions of users and more than 100k paid subscribers.
Apart from related social media accounts, BeenVerified also allows you to obtain a wide variety of useful information, including your target’s relatives, arrest history, criminal record, professional history, motor vehicle records, tax records, and much more.
You can also use BeenVerified to run a background check on your own email. This will allow you to see whether your data is being exploited on the dark web and what people can find out about you simply by having your email address. A monthly subscription allows you to conduct infinite searches and BeenVerified even features a court runner service you can employ when you require certain documents that can only be obtained in person.
So, whether you are interested in learning more about your new employer/employee, discovering more about a potential love interest or screening a new roommate, BeenVerified will provide you will all the necessary data in just a few simple steps.
Spokeo
Spokeo is a unique people search engine with more than 14 billion records and over 15 million visitors each month. The company was launched in 2006 in Pasadena, California to reunite families, reconnect old friends, prevent fraud, and much more.
Related to our current topic, Spokeo also covers more than 120 different social networks and allows you to perform extensive searches using people’s emails, names, phone numbers, physical addresses, and social media handles.
Depending on the scope of your search, the results will be generated instantly or in a couple of days, if you require more details. With Spokeo, you can obtain someone’s personal information in just a few clicks, including their name, email address, phone number, location history, date of birth, property details, criminal & tax records, family members and associates, social media accounts, income, professional history, and even lifestyle preferences.
For an extra fee, Spokeo provides its users with historical record searches and public court records. The Search Concierge will provide you with information over the phone, chat or email and Spokeo Enterprise is used for business purposes. However, the most important perk for us here is a feature called Spokeo Connections that allows you to discover all social media profiles linked to a specific email address.
ManyContacts Chrome Extension
ManyContacts created a convenient extension that enables you to find social media accounts related to any specific email address.
The best thing about this tool is the fact that it can sync with all your Gmail addresses, which basically means that you can find social media profiles of all the people who email you. You only have to click the blue tick icon in the top right corner of your screen and a list of contacts with their respective social media accounts will pop up.
This extension is quite useful for bloggers and site owners but also anybody who wants a free tool that allows them to perform quick social media searches based solely on email addresses. Having said that, it is a completely free add-on, which means it does not function as intended 100% of the time. We tried numerous email addresses and the results were quite disappointing, to be honest.
Lullar
The easiest way to explain Lullar is to say that it is a Google-like tool dedicated to email addresses and social media. Lullar does not come with a browser extension, so you have to perform your searches on the official website.
To start your search, simply visit Lullar.com and pick “People Search by name or email.” The entire process is quite easy and convenient, but the end results were definitely not what we hoped for. Namely, the software simply lists all social media with the provided email as a search criterion and you have to click on each and every one of the links to see if the account actually exists, which is far from optimal.