They say you give up your privacy once you join the world of social media. and they may be right.
Your email address is like a passport to get on the endless train of social media. Change your email address and you may find yourself spending an unexpected amount of time re-signing up for your favorite online services.
Here’s the main takeaway: People typically have one email linked to most of their online accounts, including social media. this key part of the puzzle makes it easy for anyone to find social media profiles by email address for free.
This article will explain where and how to perform email searches for free, as well as how to use the process to identify fraud.
Can you find social media profiles by email address for free?
The short answer is yes. A person’s email address is often all you need to discover social data about them, whether it’s before an important meeting or a scheduled job interview . however, there is also a complicated part.
It is more difficult to discover online accounts than it is to find social information about the person in question. however, it is still doable. Needless to say, if the person you’re searching for doesn’t use that email on any social media platform, your search likely won’t return any results.
In most cases, however, anyone with an internet connection is just a few clicks away from finding someone’s social media through an email search.
how does it work?
The following process essentially checks whether a person has used a certain email address to sign up for any social networking services.
Users of social networks such as linkedin, facebook or twitter sometimes have their data public. they choose to make some (or all) of their information public on purpose, to ensure that people can easily contact them, or unknowingly by not checking and adjusting their permission settings.
This publicly available information is called social data and can be accessed by anyone, sometimes even without an account on the target platform.
Usually, there are two ways to find all social media accounts by email for free. First, you can type the email id in the search bar on a given social media platform and review the results to find the person. Needless to say, this is usually a long and tedious process.
Another way, however, is to use so-called email lookup tools. all they ask you is to enter the email address and then they do the rest of the work. these tools aggregate publicly available social data from one or more social networks and run email identification through their database.
There are also people search sites, also known as “data brokers”, that collect private information from a wide list of public sources and then publish or sell it.
you can find information like:
- full name
- age
- sex
- profile picture/avatar
- other registration details such as phone numbers phone
- social affinities
- employment history
- current job
Remember, you can use an email address to search for profiles, but this largely depends on two things. First, the person’s privacy settings. if they haven’t made their information publicly available, search tools may not be able to find them.
Second, and more importantly, is the social media platform in question and its rules on the type of content it retains, as well as what user content they share with third parties. social media companies have detailed terms of use that are often the subject of scrutiny, especially when it comes to privacy.
Is it legal to search social networks?
Performing a search for social media accounts is legal most of the time. The most crucial aspect of social media search is that it only searches public data, such as open source databases. private information is prohibited.
It is also important to consider the reason for the search.
what counts as legal:
- find a friend or family member: People often turn to email searches if they want to get in touch with a relative they haven’t heard from in years, or a long-lost friend from high school weather. sometimes they also visit background check sites to look for dates.
- check on neighbors and check any information about them; this extends to any new friends as well.
what is considered illegal:
- Harassment: Cyberbullying or obsessive following of an individual or group online is prohibited by law. in many jurisdictions, stalking is a criminal offense. the abuser may end up facing criminal penalties such as a restraining order, probation, or even jail time.
A search on social networks by email for recruitment purposes is legal, but there are rules!
Employees often visit background check sites to get as much information as possible about a potential candidate. The problem, however, is that the person doing the background check on a potential employee can apparently find protected class information, which they are not allowed to use in the hiring process.
how to recognize fraud
Given that social networks have become an integral part of our lives, it is not surprising that there are so many fraudulent accounts. social media platforms work around the clock to remove them, but so far, they still haven’t found the right formula to make fake accounts magically disappear.
Running an email through the software for a social media account lookup is the first step in determining if the account is fraudulent. if the search returns zero results, for example, then the account is clearly riskier.
major software pieces/extensions
There are many online tools that can help you search social media by email address.
many contacts
manycontacts is a web-based tool that works within gmail. If you open your gmail account in a web browser and hover over any contact in your address book, you’ll see the social media accounts connected to that email. you can click on any of those profiles, which will take you directly to that website.
howl
lullar is a website that allows you to find all the social media accounts owned by a person by email for free. To search for an email on lullar, click “search people by email or name”, type the email address, and wait for lullar to check its social media database.
once you do, it will show you a list of social networks where the email address has been used to create an account.
lullar is an excellent tool to discover where to find a person’s social data. It’s fast and most importantly, it doesn’t charge anything for the service.
full contact
fullcontact is a software application that allows you to search for a person or company in its huge database. If you want to find someone on all social networks for free, you can search for that person by entering their email address, twitter handle or contact number.
what makes fullcontact unique is that it is configured as an api (application programming interface), so it can be more difficult to use for those who are not familiar with programming.
You have to create an account on their website and generate an api key by clicking “check api now”. with the key, you can query the api right away.
One of its best features is that it only counts the query if it matches, so you never get charged for an incorrect result.
fullcontact allows a free search of social networks by email. you can find up to 100 matches a month without a paid subscription. It also has paid subscriptions, including the full contact starter plan at $99/month. the plus plan is $299/month, and for the business plan, you need to contact the company team.
light bit
clearbit is an enrichment software that collects social data from various online sources, not just social media platforms. obtains data such as social network accounts and personal, educational and professional information.
To search for social media accounts by email on clearbit, you need to create an account. When you finish signing up, enter the person’s email address in the search bar and the search software enrichment will extract a lot of information, including online accounts.
clearbit stands out as a tool that presents information in real time so that it is always up to date and relevant.
The company offers a free trial and offers monthly and yearly subscriptions.
summarize
social media platforms have become modern squares. almost everyone is there, sharing photos, important life events and expressing their opinions. With today’s tools available, including those listed above, it’s never been easier to find someone’s social media accounts with just an email address.