Looking Up Email Addresses Online

Email is a communication tool used in all countries in the world. While email was a novelty in the 1990s, used mainly for personal reasons, email is now an established and legal form of communication.

Since the introduction of web-based email, or webmail, through services like Hotmail and Yahoo!, the ease and functionality of these services have made them the most popular email services. The leader among the webmail services is Hotmail, who just released data in May of 2010 that they have about 360 million users worldwide.

With the hundreds of millions of users of webmail, and the other hundreds of millions of email users through business, private, and university domain emails, it is a great way to stay or get in touch with a personal or business contact.

However, how do you find a specific email address among the hundreds of millions of emails? You can perform free searches on your own, or you can pay a service for the use of their email directory.

Performing Free Email Searches

Free email directories exist for the purpose of connecting those who wish to be connected. While these directories are free, they are also limited. Most webmail services and other private domain email services do not publish their members' emails due to privacy concerns.

However, a person may want to attempt to search for a specific email using a free email directory. A university website is a good place to start for old college friends or professors. Looking up lost friends or even family can be performed with a name, age, and last known location. Free email search websites like search.mylife.com has over 30 million contacts in their database.

Other great places to start a free email search is through social media sites. With any account, you can search for people who are also members. Facebook alone has over 400 million active users around the world. You might search for friends or family by name on Facebook, Twitter, or other popular social networking site like Classmates.com or Reunion.com. Most people will post their email contact on their profiles of these sites so you will know how to contact them.

Using Paid Email Search Databases

Another way to search for email addresses is through paid searches. These services are usually professional websites who have detective or investigative backgrounds. Through these sites, you might be able to get an email contact, along with additional background information as well. Others are companies that constantly build and maintain databases or email contacts. A reverse email search may be performed easier through a paid site if you are looking for someone for whom you have an email address but no name.

Finding an email address, or the owner of an email address, doesn't have to be impossible. You can do it for free most of the time, especially if you have more information about the person. Resort to paid email searches when you run into roadblocks and need the help of professional investigation or email database companies.