I might be ignorant if there exists such functionality. Can I search for a friend on Stack Exchange with their email address?.
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6Email addresses on SO are private. We'd like to keep it that way. – Martijn Pieters Sep 22 '12 at 10:58
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Normal users like us can't do it, but moderator can do it for some cases. – Lucifer Sep 22 '12 at 11:01
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If you know their email address, there is a good chance they are using either their real name, or the username of their email address as their display name on SO – ronalchn Sep 22 '12 at 11:23
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Luckily, no.
If they're your friend they can tell you their username in person, therefore your question seems to imply they're not your friend. There's no reason at all for you to know who is your friend on Stack Exchange apart from to engage in voting fraud; so, I don't see the need for this feature. Each site should be about the quality of the questions and answers not who wrote them.
Stack Exchange is not a social network.
answered Sep 22 '12 at 10:55
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Actually, you can.
By taking the md5 hash of your friend's email address, you can search the data explorer for other users using the email they used for their gravatar. This isn't foolproof, of course, since the email they used for the gravatar can be different from their usual email.
Though see Ben's answer for why this isn't a particularly good idea. I'm not entirely sure why you can't just, you know, ask your friend for his Stack Overflow username.
