tag:ask-leo.com,2009://3/tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647- 2009-11-18T17:52:43Z Comments for Can GMail be traced? Movable Type 4.25 tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:38737 Comment from TekMann on 2009-10-07 TekMann http://unspecified Yes, send him money. Send him money using Paypal. Send him $5.00. Five bucks and you have him. He'll have to use it and if he accepts it, you have a record of it in Paypal and his/her information. Now, if you want to get cleaver, keep sending money, about a dollar every week, get him used to it, he'll eventually want to withdraw the money because now you have him trained to this measely dollar a week, free money, get it? Then send an email with an even larger amount but you need an address for the check to be sent. Greed gets everyone at one point. Just be creative about it. Use another email address from the one you have and just keep sending money, this guy will think you're nuts and love every dollar of it. Hey, what's a few bucks to catch a person with no sense (cents), get it?

Also, try these guys out. http://www.readnotify.com/readnotify/about.asp

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 2009-10-08T03:41:26Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23857 Comment from melissa on 2009-06-07 melissa If someone is sending you bothersome emails, has it ever occured to you to BLOCK the sender?? Thats a pretty clever idea..you think???

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 2009-06-07T19:04:01Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23856 Comment from Tim on 2009-05-05 Tim http://unspecified I would think that the easiest way to find out the identity of the person behind the email address is via social engineering. 1. Create yourself a gmail or hotmail or whatever account. 2. Send the unknown email address a personalized offer that they cannot refuse. All they have to do is provide a name/number etc. 3. A check will be mailed... You do not need their SSN or anything just a name to which to write the check and an address.

You get the idea. Stupid people fall for this crud. You just have to convince him that he/she is risking nothing and may gain something.

If you are really tech savy you could setup a web page for him/her to go to... Then you got the IP of his/her machine... Think smarter than your opponent.

Regards,
Tim

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 2009-05-06T03:04:01Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23855 Comment from sunil on 2009-04-17 sunil http://unspecified I hate google for all this n all time .. I can't get the ip addres of the sender always abusing me using gmail account and about spams gmail is full of spams and is not hacker safe i hv seen lots of people loosing there orkut and gmail accounts.ALSO reply from google is like a big dream come true.

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 2009-04-18T00:44:45Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23854 Comment from J. Martell on 2009-03-28 J. Martell Yes, it's sad. Google will not reveal the originating IP address. This is a shame, the Help page on this discusses: "Protecting our users' privacy is something we take very seriously. Personal information, including someone's exact location, can be gathered from someone's IP address, so Gmail doesn't reveal this information in outgoing mail headers. This prevents recipients from being able to track our users, or uncover what may be potentially sensitive personal information.

Don't worry -- we aren't enabling spammers to abuse the system by not revealing IP addresses. Gmail uses many innovative spam filtering mechanisms to ensure that spammers have a difficult time sending bulk emails that arrive in users inboxes." Fine for spam but what about the scums that use gmail for scams (Craiglist is filled with scammers) and anonymous abuse? Google and Gmail: "Do no evil?" maybe but help evil, absolutely yes unfortunately.

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 2009-03-28T19:30:10Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23853 Comment from John on 2009-03-27 John http://unspecified Dominic, could you explain what you mean by the "image trick"? How exactly does this work? You send an email with an image. And then?
Thanks! John

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 2009-03-27T21:31:14Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23852 Comment from Ly on 2009-03-11 Ly I have had the same questions now for about 18 months. I have been stalked by an anonymous emailer who has threatened me and knows my every move. The individual has used numerous names and accounts, yahoo, hotmail and anonymous remailers that are impossible to trace. Now the individual has opened a gmail account and I have tried to trace through outside companies and sources. I am getting no where. I have been told by my local police department that it could take years before they could actually work the case and by that time the individual starts up another account. I too find it wrong that a person can email and not have any consequences for their action. This individual I have allowed to change my life style and hide from the public eye. The sad thing is that I am a realtor and will always be in the public eye. I feel helpless and think that if you open up accounts that they should be legitate names and be accountable for their actions. Ip addreses should be made visible from that persons computer or traced. I too have children and would not want them to suffer in the way that I am.

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 2009-03-11T22:56:46Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23851 Comment from Bob on 2009-01-27 Bob Hey Tami, you should try Googling it.

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 2009-01-27T23:03:16Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23850 Comment from steph on 2008-12-29 steph I suppose that if you have a dynamic IP address as many people have from their home ISP it would require two warants, one to Google and one to the ISP and both would have to maintain their records going back to the time in question. The IP address from Google would have to be matched to the ISP's records to actually find you.

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 2008-12-30T04:56:33Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23849 Comment from Tami on 2008-08-22 Tami http://unspecified 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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 2008-08-22T18:35:35Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23848 Comment from Nicholas D on 2008-08-18 Nicholas D 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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 2008-08-18T08:23:24Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23847 Comment from Nicholas D on 2008-08-18 Nicholas D 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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 2008-08-18T08:15:02Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23846 Comment from Hank on 2008-08-07 Hank 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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 2008-08-08T02:10:32Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23845 Comment from Dominic on 2008-03-11 Dominic 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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 2008-03-12T04:23:37Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23844 Comment from Leo A. Notenboom on 2007-04-09 Leo A. Notenboom -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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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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 2007-04-09T15:51:19Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23843 Comment from alisha ang on 2007-04-08 alisha ang 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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 2007-04-09T06:43:23Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23842 Comment from R on 2007-03-11 R 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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 2007-03-11T16:43:30Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23841 Comment from Leo Notenboom on 2007-03-10 Leo Notenboom -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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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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 2007-03-10T18:42:49Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23840 Comment from R on 2007-03-10 R 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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 2007-03-10T14:37:35Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23839 Comment from Leo Notenboom on 2007-03-09 Leo Notenboom -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
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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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 2007-03-09T23:26:02Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23838 Comment from bobby on 2007-03-08 bobby 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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 2007-03-08T20:55:05Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23837 Comment from bobby on 2007-03-08 bobby 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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 2007-03-08T20:44:03Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23836 Comment from Snapz on 2006-12-20 Snapz http://unspecified 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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 2006-12-20T08:20:49Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23835 Comment from Joe on 2006-11-29 Joe 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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 2006-11-29T14:50:05Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23834 Comment from Nona on 2006-10-16 Nona http://unspecified 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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 2006-10-16T12:29:31Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23833 Comment from me on 2006-09-29 me 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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 2006-09-29T14:01:17Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23832 Comment from En-Cu-Kou on 2006-05-23 En-Cu-Kou 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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 2006-05-24T03:09:04Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23831 Comment from anonymous on 2006-05-12 anonymous 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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 2006-05-13T05:19:03Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23830 Comment from Leo on 2006-05-07 Leo Excellent point, Jim. Thank you!

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 2006-05-08T00:15:09Z tag:ask-leo.com,2006://3.2647-comment:23829 Comment from Jim Cliff on 2006-05-07 Jim Cliff 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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 2006-05-08T00:00:48Z