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How can I trace where email came from?

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A friend of mine says she is in Singapore and she has been emailing me with her .msn account. Is there any way to tell from the message header if she is truly in Singapore? The X-Originating-IP is 99.8.186.64 which is SBC internet service in San Francisco. Does this mean she is really in San Francisco? Thanks, Mickey

There's no way to know for certain. She could be using an ISP that routes through S.F., or something else could be at play.
- Leo
17-Dec-2008

Posted by: Mickey at December 16, 2008 4:26 PM

Good post,
here is an web-based email tracer toolsL http://www.myiptest.com/staticpages/index.php/trace-email-sender

Posted by: Adrian at February 18, 2009 11:44 AM

To try this out, I traced the first "received" IP address to a Verizon account in the city where I know my friend lives. So far so good. But when the e-mail was sent to me, my friend was actually traveling and I thought had used his laptop through the internet service at the house where he was staying. Why would his original home IP address still show? Doesn't it show the IP address of the place where he connected, or does it always show the "base" address where the person signed up for his account?

It could be either, there's no way to really know. That's why IP tracing is so unreliable without help from the ISP (which they'll only give with a court order).
- Leo
04-Apr-2009

Posted by: Jim Downs at April 3, 2009 2:30 PM

I actually just tested out this service to see exactly how accurate these "IP finders" can be. I'm not terribly impressed after a couple tries. By creating a bogus email address and sending my primary account an email or two, I used a few of the suggested services to "track" my IP address. While the service DID manage to narrow the sender location down to the Hudson Valley, NY, the suggested city of origin was about 20 miles away from my home. Every service I've tried has returned this same estimated location, and usually the same suggested city. However, the problem remains that these services claimed that I lived on the wrong side of the Hudson River. Bummer.

Posted by: Dave at April 25, 2009 2:51 PM

I have a sbcglobal.net account and received a yahoo.com e-mail. Is there a way of tracing the origination of this e-mail up to the actual computer used even if the computer may be from a work/school/public location

Posted by: Sandy at May 15, 2009 10:35 PM

Can two emails sent by the same person, the same day but different hour have the same x-originating-ip?

Posted by: Jose at June 1, 2009 4:36 PM

Is it posible (without being Police) to trace ip when receiving a facebook message ?

No.
- Leo
05-Jun-2009

Posted by: Pao at June 4, 2009 6:03 PM

A former boyfriend's new girlfriend has received a half a dozen nasty e-mails from a gmail account.. They determined it was an alias and he is trying to take me to court..accusing me of sending them. I suggested they start a formal investigation with the police and they are supposivly going to subpoena gmail for their records. I didn't do it, but is there anyway someone could cut and paste and IP address or make it look like it came from my home IP address. I was at worked all day, using another IP address which I will be happy to provide as well...I think I'm just paranoid that it can be traced back to me by someone very computer savvy.

Posted by: Dawn at June 21, 2009 9:11 AM

Here's a quick online tool for tracing the source IP addresses from the email sender, along with subsequent mail stops:
http://www.myipaddress.mobi/TraceEmail.aspx

Posted by: Del Hopkins at October 25, 2009 3:37 PM

My ex girlfriend installed a program on my computer(s) that allowed her to accessed my computer and every program on it. She also installed this program on the servers at my College. Every e-mail she sent had the ISP address of my computer or my school computer on her Hotmail messages so it looks like I sent the e-mails. The tech guys removed the programs but said they couldn't tell where the terminals were accessed from. Is there anything I can do to prove it wasn't me sending the messages except for the fact that for some of them, I was in a class of 20 and didn't leave?

Posted by: John Molloy at October 30, 2009 7:08 PM
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