Email search (also called email lookup) and its counterpart, reverse email lookup, are two methods for finding information about someone by using information you already possess. Email search allows you to find out the email address of someone if you know their name (knowing the country and state or province in which they live also helps), while reverse email lookup is the term used when you’re trying to find out the name of a person who owns a particular email address. Think of it as the email equivalent of looking through your phone book’s white-pages section: you know the name and you’re using that information to find a telephone number.

Once upon a time, this may have been a frightening concept; now, though, many people count on the internet when it comes to reconnecting with old friends or finding an important email address they’ve misplaced. And given how much personal information many of us freely type into the websites we visit – social networking sites, personals or dating sites, auction sites, etc. — it seems like it should be relatively simple thing to find someone’s email address or real name.  You just type in the information you have and out pops the information you need, right? Not quite.

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