How to Use Reverse Email Lookup in Credit Risk Assessment

Reverse email lookup is a reliable mechanism for obtaining additional information about email owners. It is expedient to use it in all spheres where security issues come first, including credit risk management.

Reverse email address lookup in the lending industry allows you to verify potential borrowers and significantly reduce financial fraud.

According to the Alloy survey, 70% of decision-makers working in the financial sector reported losses of over $500,000 due to fraud.

How can reverse email lookup influence this negative trend? This is precisely what our article will discuss.

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What is a reverse email lookup?

Reverse email lookup is a method for finding information about a person based on their email address. It allows you to enter the desired person's email address into the search bar of a specialized system and obtain all the data associated with it.

You can access their last name, first name, and phone number. However, some tools also provide a list of accounts registered to that address, data about other online activity, and technical information about the address itself.

Email reverse lookup is one method of data enrichment actively used by lending organizations that are turning to alternative credit scoring.

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What can you find using the email lookup tool?

The amount of information obtained due to reverse email lookup may differ depending on the tool you use. A free reverse email lookup tool or a paid system is also essential. As a rule, free tools offer users a more limited set of data.

Let's discuss the types of data you can access on platforms like RiskSeal:

1. Personal information of the email owner. It includes their last and first name, phone number, and associated email addresses.

2. Registered email accounts and completed subscriptions. We collect information about registrations on gambling websites, e-commerce platforms, and other online resources, as well as data from services that require paid subscriptions.

3. Social media accounts. We check all social networks, including local resources.

4. Photos of potential borrowers. RiskSeal can provide the client with all user photos posted on public profiles.

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Types of checks you can perform during email lookup

With email reverse lookup, you can verify the identity of a potential borrower using their email address. 

As part of this verification, several checks are performed:

Deliverability verification. This is the process of confirming whether an email address is valid. It consists of checking the address's ability to receive emails.

Digital and social profiles. This check helps determine whether social media profiles or other online accounts are registered to a specific address.

Domain data analysis. This check analyzes the information associated with a domain name, including registration details, ownership history, DNS records, and related IP addresses.

Data breaches. This activity aims to determine whether there has been a leak of information during the specified address's existence, such as password hacking or identity theft.

Creation date check. If an email lookup shows that the mailbox was created recently, it may indicate that it was designed for applying for a loan.

Free/Disposable domain identification. This identifies addresses associated with free or disposable email service providers. Scammers usually use such addresses to avoid disclosing their data.

Throwaway email profiles. These are temporary or disposable addresses that are often used for fraudulent purposes to protect their primary address from being revealed.

Spam-listed addresses. The check allows you to determine whether an address is listed as a source of spam email by spam filtering systems or anti-spam organizations.

Suspicious top-level domain assessment. It consists of assessing a website's legitimacy and reliability based on its top-level domain. Using a country code domain like .tk or .cc may be associated with a high likelihood of fraud.

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Using reverse email lookup for credit risk management

In credit risk management, email lookup is used for two primary purposes. 

1. Identification of valuable customers. Over 17% of the world's population needs access to banking services or uses them insufficiently. Such people are called unbanked or underbanked. Due to their lack of credit history, banks cannot issue them a loan based on traditional credit scoring.

In such situations, alternative credit risk data is helpful, and reverse email lookup can provide this. Non-traditional scoring allows credit institutions to lend to reliable customers, even those with no credit history.

2. Detection of potential defaulters. Email lookup allows you to identify potential defaulters, along with lending to creditworthy people without a credit history.

For example, the fact that no social media accounts are registered to an email address may be suspicious. After all, according to Forbes, the average American has at least seven such accounts.

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Using reverse email lookup for fraud detection

Email lookup allows you to identify scammers and potential defaulters. This method's principle is based on the fact that fraudsters can steal and use real people's data but cannot create a digital history.

Email lookup shows an email address's history, i.e., on which online platforms and social networks it is registered.

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How to reverse lookup an email address?

There are several ways to do email reverse lookup. 

Most systems allow users to enter the desired address into the search bar, after which all the information found will be displayed on the website. 

Some tools also allow you to download reports in PDF or spreadsheet format.

There are also platforms on the market that use API calls for email lookup—the RiskSeal system is one such tool.

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What is the working principle of email reverse lookup?

Credit institutions use email addresses for reverse lookups that potential borrowers indicate in their loan applications.

Using them, lenders search for registered accounts on social networks and determine activity on other online platforms.

This process is carried out in several stages:

1. Entering an email address in the search bar. The system gains access to the initial data, i.e., the address of the potential borrower.

2. Searching for information in public databases. The system analyzes data from open sources.

3. Match analysis. The tool records all matches of an email address with registrations on various online resources.

4. Display report. The system provides the user with search results (all matches found).

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How RiskSeal enhances credit scoring using email reverse lookup

Reverse email lookup is one of the checks available as part of the RiskSeal digital credit scoring using digital footprints. 

In our practice, we have used this method in many cases to help our clients recognize valuable customers or fraudsters, and the results have been excellent.

By contacting for reverse email address lookup in RiskSeal, you receive the following:

Positive user experience. The platform ensures smooth user onboarding through efficient background checks.

Minimizing costs. By identifying potential defaulters early, your KYC processes will be more cost-efficient. More precisely, your expenses may decrease by 2.5 times.

Increased fraud detection. RiskSeal's advanced data analysis helps identify scammers based on their email addresses.

With the introduction of reverse email lookup into our verification system, we effectively help credit institutions in risk management and fraud prevention.