How to find people’s E-mail
addresses
Introduction
A question which appears frequently on the Usenet is, “I know
someone’s name, and I think they might have an electronic mail address
somewhere. How can I find it?” There are many different techniques for doing
this. Several of them are discussed below. Your best bet is to try the pertinent
methods in this posting in the order in which they are listed (well, sort of; at
the very least, please try all the pertinent methods which do not involve
posting queries to soc.net-people before resorting to that). I’ve listed “Direct
contact” near the end of this list because, for some reason, people seem to be
reluctant to call people on the telephone or write them a paper-mail letter
asking what their E-mail address is, as long as there is even a remote chance
that it might be found without asking. This attitude is somewhat
counterproductive, since in most cases, it is much easier to get someone’s
E-mail address by asking them than it is by following the other methods outlined
below. Furthermore, even if you do manage to find an E-mail address using one of
the on-line methods described below, it is not guaranteed that the person at the
other end of the line checks that address regularly or even that it is the
correct address. Therefore, if you do have a telephone number that isn’t too
expensive to call, or if you have a paper-mail address and aren’t in too much of
a hurry, you can probably save yourself a lot of trouble by skipping all of the
on-line methods listed below and going directly to “Direct contact.”
Avoid public distribution of individuals’
addresses
It is considered rude to widely distribute (e.g., in a Usenet
posting) a person’s E-mail address without his/her prior consent, even if the
address is publicly available using one of the techniques described below or
some other technique. It might seem that having one’s E-mail address listed in a
publicly accessible database is equivalent to distributing it, but this is not
the case in practice, for three primary reasons: * Some people may not be aware
that their addresses are available for others to locate. For example, the
majority of Usenet posters are unaware of the database of Usenet E-mail
addresses mentioned below. * When some effort is required to locate a person’s
address (e.g., using the techniques described below), only people who have a
specific reason to send mail to him/her will go to the trouble. However, if the
address is mentioned in a Usenet posting read by thousands of people, no effort
is required to obtain it, and many more people will send him/her mail. Most
people with E-mail addresses are not accustomed to receiving E-mail from
strangers or large amounts of E-mail, and they may not be happy if they do. * As
unwanted E-mail becomes more common, people will start to remove their addresses
from public databases, which means that it will become more difficult to find
people’s addresses for legitimate reasons. In summary, if you want to advertise
someone’s E-mail address, get his/her permission before you do it. Besides, if
you’re going to advertise an address, it’s a good idea to make sure it works
first, and writing to it for permission is a good way to do that.
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