Comments for Can GMail be traced?

Comment from Tami on 2008-08-22

2008-08-22T18:35:35Z

I want to find the identity of emailer that sent harassing emails from Gmail. The Google web site FAQs were not clear. Here are some of my questions:

What legal steps do you take to trace a Gmail IP address?

How do you file a complaint?

Do you have to get a judge to order a search warrant?

What legal basis would Google justify releasing the IP address?

Does the email recipient need to show how they have been damaged?

Where do you serve it to in Google?

How much does the 1st Amendment protect Google from releasing the Gmail senders identity?

How does Google maintain records? (The incident I'm investigating occurred in March 2007 - about 18 months ago).

What is Google's procedure for handling requests for tracing the senders?

How long would it take to get this information from Google?

You need to take these questions to law enforcement or an attorney.
-Leo

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Comment from Nicholas D on 2008-08-18

2008-08-18T08:23:24Z

Whops, just saw on the first page that my point have already been covered in the comments. Maybe you should add "read all comments" to the list of things to do before commenting. : )

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Comment from Nicholas D on 2008-08-18

2008-08-18T08:15:02Z

There is also another case you maybe should have mentioned: web-based email-services like gmail that is handled via a local client like Outlook. Turns out that mails sent this way does add the senders IP.

Of course you did say that about local clients, but you only associate gmail with the web-based kind, so one might get away with the impression that gmail is safe, when in fact it isn't always.

Also, the original question doesn't specify whether he's talking about using gmail via the web or not (technically you 'log on' to the gmail account in either case.) That may also be the reason for the conflicing answers he had gotten -- one was talking about using the web-interface and the other a local client.

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Comment from Hank on 2008-08-07

2008-08-08T02:10:32Z

Google does not display the originating IP addresses and does not allow them to be sent. this is why spammers love Gmail

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Comment from Dominic on 2008-03-11

2008-03-12T04:23:37Z

I disagree completely with your argument that someone who sends an email to me has a right to keep their originating IP address private.

Anyone who communicates with me is making themselves known to me. Their IP address is part of their identity and so is not private at that point. If they don't want me to know, then they should not communicate with me.

In fact, gmail is a liability to Google for the very fact that it is a great tool for sleaze bags. You can't track originating IP addresses from gmail senders. That news will get out to child predators, fraudsters and bullies -- and probably is already.

Have you ever tried to get a response from Google for any customer service issue? Try doing it if you have a concern that your child is being preyed upon by a pedophile. You'll be desperate to know, but you'll have to wait weeks, months, years even to get help from Google.

That's ridiculous, especially because in most cases doing a quick lookup of an originating IP address could immediately put your mind at ease. MSN Hotmail and Yahoo Mail capture the originating IP addresses in most cases.

I've just had personal experience with a case like this involving gmail, where I had to use the "image trick" to capture the IP of someone I thought was a predator preying on my daughter. For two days, the stress of not knowing was awful. When I got the orginating IP by tricking the sender into clicking on an image link, I was able to find out that the "predator" was just a girl who had opened a gmail account in a fake name and was masquerading as a guy.

But I realized that this is a problem, a flaw in Gmail. Privacy has nothing to do with it. If you send an email to someone, you're telling them who you are and they have a right to check that you are who you say.

Don't mix this up with the right to keep your private web activities private. The two are most definitely not the same.

I'm a big privacy advocate, but I learned that thinking simplistically is dangerous.

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Comment from Leo A. Notenboom on 2007-04-09

2007-04-09T15:51:19Z

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No. If it warrents it you'd have to involve the police and get them to get
Google to help you.

Leo
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Comment from alisha ang on 2007-04-08

2007-04-09T06:43:23Z

Tis person created this email id and then sent a message to the whole organization spreading how bad is this person Intan... Do you have any ways to track who is this person? Where and what time?

[email address removed]

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Comment from R on 2007-03-11

2007-03-11T16:43:30Z

I can just say it works for me, and I can't see why it shouldn't work for anybody else.
Mostly I include an image myself, then the recipient will almost certainly enable display for the message...
the stats are bullcrap, there's no such thing as stats for this matter... i agree that if you use the didtheyreadit service you rely on them, otherwise the other option is working great.
have you tried this yourself?

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Comment from Leo Notenboom on 2007-03-10

2007-03-10T18:42:49Z

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These days that technique works very INfrequently. I've heard stats as
high as it working less than 50% of the time, but in my experience it's
much MUCH less.

Most people have remote images disabled, and that's what this technique
relies on. Since you can't control what people do in their mailers, it's
still the case that there is no reliable way to determine if someone's
opened your email.

Leo
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Comment from R on 2007-03-10

2007-03-10T14:37:35Z

Take a look at www.didtheyreadit.com
The idea is very simple, you send a mail to them, they send it to the recipient, including an invisible image (which resides on didtheyreadits server), as soon as the recipient opens the mail the recipients IP-address is logged and send to you by mail... that does the trick, it's completely transparent...
You could otherwise set up a free website (which has IP logging available to you) and put some image on it. Then just hotlink to that image in your email... You can then pick up the IP-address from your referrer-stats...

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Comment from Leo Notenboom on 2007-03-09

2007-03-09T23:26:02Z

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There's no way to confirm much of anything about the IP without the help
of the ISP that owns it, and they'll likely insist you have some legal
reason (court order, police, whatever) before they'll help you.

There's no way to know in general if a place of work - or any place for
that matter - keeps a log of what's happening. You'd have to speak to
the IT department, or whomever handles the IT for that place of work.

Leo
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Comment from bobby on 2007-03-08

2007-03-08T20:55:05Z

Also Leo- if the emails were sent from shared work computers is there any record of the emails kept on them? With access to the computer could we determine if the emails originated from them? Sorry not exactly on topic but related to the above question. Thanks...

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Comment from bobby on 2007-03-08

2007-03-08T20:44:03Z

OK- just to clarify. If there are some seriously abusive emails coming in from a Gmail account, and without involving the police, and assuming I know the IP address of the person we suspect of sending, is there any way we can verify this?

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Comment from Snapz on 2006-12-20

2006-12-20T08:20:49Z

One would only think that you would have to have server side access to see the log files at the time of password change. Like stated above you would have to get this information either a: by contacting the server admin and hope for a response......or b:get the law involved like he said if its even worth their time. On the other hand... if you do have there IP addy and you know its theirs... you can try and run a trace here http://www.dnsstuff.com/ and see what you come up with.

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Comment from Joe on 2006-11-29

2006-11-29T14:50:05Z

I'm very curious on this last comment posted by Nona because it happened to me - "Somebody has broken into my account and changed my password. I THINK I know who the person is, and the problem is that this person actually knew my old password. I have already changed it again, so there's no way he is going to find out again, he's not a hacker, he just knew my password because I was silly enough to leave it written next to my computer. In any case, can I know for sure who did this? Can I trace the IP address from where the change of password was made?"

Would love to know the answer to this one.
Thanks

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Comment from Nona on 2006-10-16

2006-10-16T12:29:31Z

Somebody has broken into my account and changed my password. I THINK I know who the person is, and the problem is that this person actually knew my old password. I have already changed it again, so there's no way he is going to find out again, he's not a hacker, he just knew my password because I was silly enough to leave it written next to my computer. In any case, can I know for sure who did this? Can I trace the IP address from where the change of password was made?

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Comment from me on 2006-09-29

2006-09-29T14:01:17Z

if you add an anonymous comment on a live journal or other online comment page, can the people there trace the comment to you or your computer?

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Comment from En-Cu-Kou on 2006-05-23

2006-05-24T03:09:04Z

To anonymous: Probably not, as the article tells you. The most you can do is see if an IP address is present in the headers of the message (how to get to that depends on your e-mail client), but even if there is one, matching it to a person is usually impossible for "mere mortals".

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Comment from anonymous on 2006-05-12

2006-05-13T05:19:03Z

i keep getting these wierd mails. but i wanna solve my probs myself. but its a gmail account. i wanna trace the mails. cn i do it? if i cn, how?

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Comment from Leo on 2006-05-07

2006-05-08T00:15:09Z

Excellent point, Jim. Thank you!

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Comment from Jim Cliff on 2006-05-07

2006-05-08T00:00:48Z

Leo, you forget that Gmail also offers Pop3 access to email. I have it setup to use from OE on my computer. As a test I sent a test message from my Gmail address to my backup ATT address via my Adelphia ISP. The message arrived correctly identifying my Adelphia IP address.

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