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On 2025-05-21 at 09:24, Jonathan Dowland wrote:

On Wed May 21, 2025 at 2:21 PM BST, john doe wrote:

Is there a way to find the correct e-mail address if you only have
the first and last name and the domain ((jane doe domain.TLD)?

In general, no.

The reason is that E-mail addresses do not have to be matched to
people's names, either in any obvious way, or indeed in any way at all.

Jane F. Doe's E-mail address under example.com could be any of:

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

or any of many, many others.


My own E-mail address bears no relation or resemblance to my legal name,
or the name I go by in daily conversation. If all you know are my name
as-such and the domain I have the address under, you'd have basically no
chance of guessing the E-mail address correctly.

Even if you knew the handle I go by, and the domain, you'd still have to
guess whether the address was wanderer@, or thewanderer@, or
the_wanderer@, or something that *is* based on my real name instead of
on my handle, or...

The general case of "guess an E-mail address from a name/handle and a
domain" is, essentially, an impossible proposition.

--
The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw


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On Wed May 21, 2025 at 2:21 PM BST, john doe wrote:

Is there a way to find the correct e-mail address if you only have the
first and last name and the domain ((jane doe domain.TLD)?

In general, no.

--
Please do not CC me for listmail.

👱🏻 Jonathan Dowland
✎ [email protected]
🔗 https://jmtd.net

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Am Mittwoch, 21. Mai 2025, 15:24:36 CEST schrieb Jonathan Dowland:

On Wed May 21, 2025 at 2:21 PM BST, john doe wrote:

Is there a way to find the correct e-mail address if you only have the first and last name and the domain ((jane doe domain.TLD)?

In general, no.

You may try to use a special tool for this, called "Maltego"
(www.maltego.com). It is part of KALI-Linux, but you can also install it on debian. There is a package for it available.

However, dunno how exact this tool is, as far as I examined, it is just a collection of different sources, like Google search, BING and others.

Just a hint, but maybe it helps though.

Best

Hans

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On Wed, 21 May 2025 15:21:15 +0200
john doe <[email protected]> wrote:

Hello all,

Is there a way to find the correct e-mail address if you only have
the first and last name and the domain ((jane doe domain.TLD)?

I know that it is possible to send e-mails to that domain I'm just
missing the correct e-mail for that specific person and to directly
message that person.

If the person is an employee at <domain> which is a business, it is
worth trying firstname.lastname@<domain> as this is what MS Exchange
will usually issue as a default. Other than a pure guess like that, no,
email addresses are considered somewhat confidential.

There was a time you could have emailed postmaster@<domain> and asked
that a message be forwarded to the person, but I think now few domains
actually have a postmaster user or alias.

--
Joe

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Wed, 2025-05-21 at 15:16 +0100, Joe wrote:

There was a time you could have emailed postmaster@<domain> and asked
that a message be forwarded to the person, but I think now few
domains actually have a postmaster user or alias.

Any mailserver accepting mail for a particular domain without having a
properly configured postmaster address is not spec-compliant (and
probably deserves to be blacklisted).

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5321.html#section-4.5.1

(That doesn’t mean the people behind the address have to forward random
mail, of course.)


--
Jan Claeys

(please don't CC me when replying to the list)

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

This is an OpenPGP/MIME signed message (RFC 4880 and 3156)
On 2025-05-22 at 10:53, Jan Claeys wrote:

On Wed, 2025-05-21 at 15:16 +0100, Joe wrote:

There was a time you could have emailed postmaster@<domain> and
asked that a message be forwarded to the person, but I think now
few domains actually have a postmaster user or alias.

Any mailserver accepting mail for a particular domain without having
a properly configured postmaster address is not spec-compliant (and
probably deserves to be blacklisted).

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5321.html#section-4.5.1

These days, I would be *surprised* if most mail-accepting domains *did*
have a postmaster address - and even more so if they actually had
someone monitoring it, or otherwise ensuring that mail sent to it didn't
just get dropped into the bit bucket.

RFC / spec compliance can easily be, and I suspect usually is,
disregarded in this regard.

I just chalk it up as another one of the Nice Things that We Can't Have, because of the usual Reason Why: if we have the Nice Things, bad actors
(in this case, spammers) will take advantage of them to exploit people.

--
The Wanderer

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all
progress depends on the unreasonable man. -- George Bernard Shaw


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On Thu, 22 May 2025 11:57:28 -0400
The Wanderer <[email protected]> wrote:

On 2025-05-22 at 10:53, Jan Claeys wrote:

On Wed, 2025-05-21 at 15:16 +0100, Joe wrote:

There was a time you could have emailed postmaster@<domain> and
asked that a message be forwarded to the person, but I think now
few domains actually have a postmaster user or alias.

Any mailserver accepting mail for a particular domain without having
a properly configured postmaster address is not spec-compliant (and probably deserves to be blacklisted).

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5321.html#section-4.5.1

I'm aware of that.

These days, I would be *surprised* if most mail-accepting domains
*did* have a postmaster address - and even more so if they actually
had someone monitoring it, or otherwise ensuring that mail sent to it
didn't just get dropped into the bit bucket.

RFC / spec compliance can easily be, and I suspect usually is,
disregarded in this regard.

I just chalk it up as another one of the Nice Things that We Can't
Have, because of the usual Reason Why: if we have the Nice Things,
bad actors (in this case, spammers) will take advantage of them to
exploit people.

Theoretically, but I think that spammers only want to reach easily
fooled people, and prefer not to come to the attention of the IT admin
for the domain.

I've accepted and aliased postmaster and abuse for more than twenty
years, in which time I've had two spams, obviously both from the same
source.

Certainly the big fish in the pool (Yahoo, Google etc.) don't accept
them, because then people would be able to complain about spam from
their customers, which they make extraordinarily difficult to do.

--
Joe

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
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Hi there


On 23/05/2025 10:56, Joe wrote:

On Thu, 22 May 2025 11:57:28 -0400
The Wanderer <[email protected]> wrote:

On 2025-05-22 at 10:53, Jan Claeys wrote:

On Wed, 2025-05-21 at 15:16 +0100, Joe wrote:

There was a time you could have emailed postmaster@<domain> and
asked that a message be forwarded to the person, but I think now
few domains actually have a postmaster user or alias.

Any mailserver accepting mail for a particular domain without having
a properly configured postmaster address is not spec-compliant (and
probably deserves to be blacklisted).

https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc5321.html#section-4.5.1

I'm aware of that.

These days, I would be *surprised* if most mail-accepting domains
*did* have a postmaster address - and even more so if they actually
had someone monitoring it, or otherwise ensuring that mail sent to it
didn't just get dropped into the bit bucket.

RFC / spec compliance can easily be, and I suspect usually is,
disregarded in this regard.

I just chalk it up as another one of the Nice Things that We Can't
Have, because of the usual Reason Why: if we have the Nice Things,
bad actors (in this case, spammers) will take advantage of them to
exploit people.

I spam filter postmaster the same way as other 'users'; People will spam postmaster, just as they spam webmaster.

Theoretically, but I think that spammers only want to reach easily
fooled people, and prefer not to come to the attention of the IT admin
for the domain.

I've accepted and aliased postmaster and abuse for more than twenty
years, in which time I've had two spams, obviously both from the same
source.

In the 30 years that I run a mail server I never had any spam directed
at abuse.

Certainly the big fish in the pool (Yahoo, Google etc.) don't accept
them, because then people would be able to complain about spam from
their customers, which they make extraordinarily difficult to do.

Regards,
Rob

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)