How to find people

There are many resources on the Net which allow you to find people. Finding people is a major industry today, and people finding is a skill which you should acquire.
There is, as yet, no central directory or 'White Pages' which contains everyone's Internet email address. And be very careful of all these emails that claim to give you "private info" about people - and companies.

• People registering their email addresses with 'people finder' search engines. Some of these search engines (as listed below) require you to give your name and email address before they allow you to carry out a search. That way, they build up their directory.
• People who have contributed to one of the many thousands of Newsgroups and Email Discussion Lists.
• Email addresses which appear on Web sites.

This page concentrates on resources which can be found on the World Wide Web. There are other more specialised ways of finding email addresses, particularly in the academic world. If you really want to delve into the cobwebby areas of the Internet, have a look at the FAQ on How to Find People's Email Addresses, maintained by David Alex Lamb - although we found that some of the files on this site did not load correctly. Also, if you have access to one of the on-line service providers such as CompuServe or AOL, you can search their databases for members email addresses.

You will normally stand a better chance of finding someone's email address if you know their approximate location - city, state or county and country. After all, looking for Joe Smith, somewhere on this planet, is a bit of a tall order!

Many of the email search sites shown below have a number of other facilities, usually free. One common offering is a free web-based email address, which means that you can access mail sent to this address from anywhere that you can get web access. We quite like the Rocket Mail offering at Four11, with quite a sophisticated email filing system. Other facilities often offered are company searches and telephone number searches (usually restricted to the United States)

Further help on this topic...

You'll find further help on this topic, or closely related issues, in the side columns on this page..

Start here FIRST!

One of the best starting points is Phonenumbers.net...
http://www.phonenumbers.net
This site gives you access to many of the specialised directories (the most important of which are listed below) and it appears to cover the whole world - some in more detail than others. It's still not a complete source, but it's extremely useful. It potentially can come up with addresses, phone numbers and email addresses.

If you are looking for someone in the UK, BT has a good online directory. They change the URL from time to time. Last time we checked, it was at:

http://www.bt.com/directory-enquiries/dq_home.jsp

If this doesn't work, try the home page and look for the link to "Directory Enquiries": http://www.bt.com/

Specialised email address directories

Bigfoot
"Bigfoot has the Internet's largest collection of e-mail addresses and "white page" listings." Offers an "email address for life" with features such as autoresponders, reminders and "anti-spam" systems.
http://www.bigfoot.com

Yahoo People Search
Took over Four11's service, and added their own free email service to replace Rocketmail. Seems good for North America, weak elsewhere in the world
http://people.yahoo.com/

Info Space
This URL takes you to Accumail's Info Space email search page. Their home page, - http://www.infospace.com - contains some other interesting resources and search facilities.
http://in-142.infospace.com/_1_4PD2T5D03M28VO6__info/email1.htm

Who? Where?
Now owned by Lycos. Search for people, companies and (US) telephone numbers. Another free web-based email system (MailCity) offered. Plus greetings cards service and a number of other gizmos. French, Spanish and Japanese versions available.
http://www.whowhere.lycos.com/

Internet Address Finder
A modest 5.8 million email addresses claimed. Not a lot of other frills, but seems to work fast. Versions available in Dutch, French, German, Italian and Portuguese
http://www.iaf.net

World Email Directory
18 million email addresses claimed, along with 140 million businesses world wide. Public and members' search areas. Search on 'Name', 'Interest' or 'Business'. Easy to add your own email address, with spam mail blocking facilities.
http://worldemail.com/

Search engines' people finders

A number of the Web search engines also have 'people finder' services. Some are listed above - where they have taken over existing services. The URLs below will take you directly to the relevant people search pages on other search engines. For more details on individual Web search engines, see the Search Engines pages on this site.

Excite http://www.infospace.com/info.xcite/index_ppl.htm

Hotbot Mainly US listings
http://www.hotbot.com/partners/people.html

Previous page

Next page