You've Got Mail

Email has become a huge part of daily communication in our culture. We send and consume these small digital messages in all hours of the day in all their convenient splendor. Most people can’t remember a time when the “at” sign (@) was used for anything other than denoting what company a person’s email account was with. There is no foolproof system to keep your email account from getting mailed by sales pitches, sneaky “hello” messages (that turn out to be a robotic messaging of random accounts), or messages that have spyware or viruses as attachments.

This is called, as a whole, spam. No not the meat. By now most people have heard this term used to describe “unsolicited or undesired electronic messages”. It is this abuse of the system that does not allow for a universal email directory. Hence, finding a person’s email is nothing like opening the phonebook (or in the more modern sense, visiting an online phone book).

There are of course services that attempt to bridge this gap and help consumers find an email address. These websites are not open directories; rather a user needs the specific name of the person whose email is being sought after. Conversely, if someone has the email, the first and last name corresponding to that specific email can be found.

If you are looking to do either of those things you can learn about the different services out there and find out where they rank. There is a Squidoo lens dedicated to just that. It’s called Looking Up Email.