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How to Find Someone on Instagram by Email [2024]

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How to Find Someone on Instagram by Email [2024]

Maybe you’re trying to reconnect with an old friend, build a business collaboration, or like this case on Reddit, you want to look up your own list of Instagram accounts you created long ago but couldn’t retrieve from memory1. In any of these cases, you can find effective solutions we collected and tested out for getting someone’s Instagram by email quickly and easily.

1: Search for someone on Instagram without a username

If you want a safe and ready-made solution, a people search tool could be your first choice. Using a people search, you could find a specific person on Instagram with only an email address. Additional information like a name, phone number, or a rough address can also work.

For tech geeks, an OSINT script might be a popular way to target an Instagram account, just like what the user on Reddit is looking for2. But we don’t recommend the solution. As Instagram updates frequently, this kind of command line tools gets invalid pretty soon. Besides, it’s hard to control the risk of being hacked.

Option 1 – BeenVerified

BeenVerified is one of the best people search tools out there. With a large database containing millions of records, it allows you to look up someone’s Instagram username with just an email address, as well as other social media accounts like Facebook or LinkedIn.

Click the button and search for the Instagram account by email address.

Or, if you happen to have a name, phone number, or address, you can perform a search on the BeenVerified homepage.

It may take a while for BeenVerified to pull the data and generate a complete email report. You could navigate to Social & Websites to see if there’s a linked Instagram profile.

If you didn’t see any Instagram profiles, scroll up to Possible Owners and click Search person. The Person report may bring you more details.

You’ll be directed to a search page where you could filter results by setting specific locations and ages. Then click View person report.

Go to Social Media and you may see more available profiles.

Option 2 – Spokeo

If BeenVerified didn’t give you luck, you can try Spokeo. It’s also a popular people search tool for you to look up someone’s personal information and social media profiles. By running a reverse email lookup with Spokeo, you’ll not only find the person’s Instagram but also contact info, other social profiles, relatives, etc.

Visit the Spokeo search page. Select the Email tab, type in an email, and click Search Now.

Spokeo will scan for the possible owner of the email. You need to identify the correct person by their location and relatives and then click SEE RESULTS.

On the report, scroll to Social Profiles and click View Detail.

You should find all the profiles linked to the person’s email, Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and more.

Option 3 – Social Catfish

Social Catfish is an online dating investigation service that specializes in finding social media accounts. Just enter the email and hit search, and you’ll find what social media or online platform the person is on.

Beyond just email search, Social Catfish features a reverse image lookup. Simply upload a person’s picture, and the tool may track similar images online and identify the possible owners and his/her social media profiles.

Bonus Tip – Data Protection

We’ve seen a case in which the poster claimed to have created a new private Instagram account, but the stalker who knew her in real life soon found it out. She just couldn’t understand how that happened3. Now with our methods introduced, you probably could think of the easiest way the stalker might take, that is to make use of these people search tricks.

So if you feel unsure, search yourself first to check and protect your own private data online. A people search tool can actually remove your own social media information in your personal report if you’d like them to. For example, you could apply for a removal of your own records on BeenVerified without any cost.

Or if you want a regular automated scan and removal of your leaked information online, you may book a service from data protection products, such as DeleteMe.

2: Sync your contacts on Instagram

If you have the phone number of the person you’re looking for, you can add it to your contacts and allow Instagram to search for you. Here’s how:

  1. Add the person’s phone number to your contacts.
  2. Open Instagram and go to your profile page. Tab the three-line icon on the top-right corner.
  3. Select Discover People.
  4. Tab Connect to sync your phone contacts. Once done, Instagram will show you the accounts that are linked to your contacts as suggestions.

However, this trick is not 100% working. Instagram encourages users to link their phone numbers to be more engaged with family and friends, but it’s not required, and not many people are actually doing so.

You can also link your Facebook account. Instagram will show you all the Instagram accounts of your Facebook friend if they also link their accounts together.

3: Look up someone on Facebook by email

We know that by default, Instagram doesn’t allow users to search for someone with an email address. But, you can work around it by searching on Facebook.

When using the web version of Facebook, you can directly type the email address into the search bar and browse the related results. Facebook won’t directly lead you to a profile registered to that email address. However, if the email address includes the person’s full name, for example, johnsmith@gmail.com, the profile of the person may show up.

If so, you could open his/her Facebook profile and click About > Contact and basic info to check the person’s Instagram profile (if (s)he added one).

If you only find the Facebook account but the person didn’t link his/her Instagram account, you can still mark down the useful information. Name, location, education, and mutual friends (if any), could all be helpful for your future searches.

You can use this information on people search tools such as BeenVerified and Spokeo, which may yield the exact Instagram account you’re looking for.


Credits: Photo by solenfeyissa on Pixabay

  1. r/Instagram [Terrible_Bicycle2706]. (2021 Jul. 18th). How can I find a list of the Instagram accounts associated with my email address? [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/Instagram/comments/oma95h/how_can_i_find_a_list_of_the_instagram_accounts/. ↩︎
  2. r/OSINT [gollyned]. (2023 Apr. 22nd). Finding instagram account name by email? [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/OSINT/comments/12va1vd/finding_instagram_account_name_by_email/. ↩︎
  3. r/TheGirlSurvivalGuide [Away_Play6290]. (2022 Jul. 29th). How was this person able to find my private instagram? [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/TheGirlSurvivalGuide/comments/waslur/how_was_this_person_able_to_find_my_private/. ↩︎
exclamation-blueThere’s no guarantee you’ll find the information you’re looking for with the tools discussed in this article. They all source their information from publicly available data sources, such as county, state and federal courts, government departments, and police records, and those sources may contain incorrect or incomplete data. It’s illegal to use these tools to make decisions about employment, admission, consumer credit, insurance, tenant screening, or any other purpose that would require FCRA compliance. Read the Fair Credit Reporting Act to learn more....

About this article

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Katie is a content creator at Super Easy. She expresses her passion through writing about life hacks, coupon tricks, and tech tips for her audience. Katie covers a variety of topics, from gaming to everyday life tips, from technology to beauty. When she's not writing, she can be found on the way to a concert or a weekend getaway road trip.

Contributors

Glenn Murray

Customer Experience Director

Ellie Zhuang

Writer

Chantel Huang

English Technical Writer

About this article

round-success 64 Revisions

file-success Reviewed by BeenVerified

Katie is a content creator at Super Easy. She expresses her passion through writing about life hacks, coupon tricks, and tech tips for her audience. Katie covers a variety of topics, from gaming to everyday life tips, from technology to beauty. When she's not writing, she can be found on the way to a concert or a weekend getaway road trip.

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Contributors

Glenn Murray

Customer Experience Director

Ellie Zhuang

Writer

Chantel Huang

English Technical Writer