How Do I Find Out Who An Email Address Is From?

We all get some spam or strange emails at some point, some more than others. Often it would be nice to find out exactly who and email is coming from. The address is not always a good indicator as it can be spoofed easily. In the source of every email are some pointers to figure out where it came from but even these are often spoofed or disguised by more sophisticated techniques. There are few things one can do to find out who an email is from though.

The first thing is to check out the return email address in the standard FROM line. It is usually of the format, someone@somedomainname.someextension. This can at least tell you where it possibly originated. Let’s say it is from someone@hotmail.com – this is fairly obvious someone is using a hotmail account. Unfortunately there this is not anything certain as it could have been spoofed or disguised. If it was indeed the senders email there is not too much one can do to trace it beyond this point as places like Hotmail and other free email providers protect the identity of their account holders. One shot in the dark technique you can try is searching the email address contained in quotes on Google. This may bring up a blog or other information leading to the identity of the email.

The other thing to try is looking into the source of the email message. This can be done in programs like Outlook Express or Outlook by right clicking on and message and choosing properties and then choosing details and message source. At the top is what’s called the message headers. There is information about what IP address the email originated from, what the reply to email is as well as other stuff. If you look at the Return-path: it usually gives and email address that more accurately tells who sent the email than the from line in the message. There is also some Received: information that tells which email servers where used, often indicating where it was sent from.

All this said it is still possible for a good spammer to spoof all this information or alternately hack into other peoples computers and send emails from their. It is like bank robbers who steal a car to use as a getaway vehicle. Even if you find the car it traces back to the wrong person. Email is very difficult to track and this is good on one hand since we all want our privacy protected especially if we are not doing anything wrong.