People look up email addresses for a number of reasons, including wanting to find former classmates, business associates, and distant relatives.
Even people who have been long separated from co-workers or family are typically able to make contact after a brief search.
This is rather remarkable given there were approximately 1.
3 billion active addresses as of August 2008.
Despite the odds against finding someones email address in this enormous haystack of mailboxes, people do still manage to re-connect.
How does this happen? What makes it possible to look up email addresses despite the vast number of existing accounts is the development of databanks which have accumulated data over the years.
Every time one of us opens an account, uses an e-payment service, or submits a request for more information, a database logs which account was used and to whom it belongs.
All these recorded transactions create anxiety with the many US citizens who are concerned with the privacy of their online activities.
As a result many people have begun to use false accounts to hide whatever online activities that do not absolutely require a valid transactional related account (such as a bank account or brokerage account).
Even so, all these so-called anonymous accounts are also tracked including right down to the IP address of your internet connection.
Given most people connect to the internet via cable modem or DSL that means the IP address they used is fixed, which links the user to their pseudonym, and the pseudonyms to each other, and the all back to the computer from where they were created.
This means that even the most cleverly setup account will not be invisible to someone wanting to look up email addresses related to the initiating IP address.