Since so many Web services exist that allow for the quick creation of free, disposal email addresses, it is hard to confirm someone's identity based upon their email address. Tracing their email address back to an actual name is even harder since the name field of any email address can be easily manipulated before the message is sent, making the creation of an alias simple. The best way to confirm someone's name and email is to use social networking services, PGP key servers and commercial reverse look-up services.
Instructions
1. Launch your Web browser, and navigate to a search engine. Type in the email address you are trying to confirm. This basic search may yield nothing but could give you a lot of information. Try across all three major search engines (Bing, Google and Yahoo!) since each will give different results. Also try using Yahoo!'s People Search to confirm the email address via the person's name.
2. Search social networking sites if the basic search engine does not reveal anything. People are notorious for giving up to much of their private information through social networks, and most social networks allow you to search by email address. If nothing comes up on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or MySpace, then you know that the email address you have is not the person's primary email or that the person you are looking to verify does not use social networking.
3. Search a PGP public key server (see Resources). Since PGP is the norm for secure communication in business and is also a way of confirming one's identity, it is a great place to confirm a professional's email address.
4. Use a search service to search across multiple networks and databases (see Resources). These services often can be used to search multiple social networks at once. Also, they will often provide a paid option for retrieving more information from private databases. It's safe to say, however, that if someone is not using his or her email on social networks, then it is probably a disposable email address.
