how to trace an IP address from an e-mail

[gamelife]

hi all,

i've been receiving alot of stupid e-mail's from a couple of addresses, think i know who it is though, but can't be sure.

how do you get hold of someone's IP? i've heard that you can trace an e-mail back to the person who sent it (even to a home address) using this method??

any help would be great,

rich

[Super Stu]

Read my post in the following thread, mate

link

[gamelife]

not really sure what all that means? i use hotmail via the internet and i dont use outlook express.

isn't there an easy way to get the IP from an e-mail?

rich

[Super Stu]

No, there isn't. It's only available through the email headers, which is what I described how to access in that post (admittedly via OE, but you didn't say you were using hotmail)

Go into the options in Hotmail and turn on something which sounds like Display Full Message or Display Full Headers, something along those lines. Don't have an active Hotmail account myself to look it up.

Once you call up the email and can see the full header, use my post to locate the IP address of the computer the email was sent from.

[gamelife]

ok cheers, i'll have a go at that

[gamelife]

i managed to get the IP address (at last), so how do i get the persons info etc using the IP. i think the person who's sending me these e-mail's is a old friend of mine and i want to catch him out.

[Super Stu]

You can't, it's confidential information which only ISP workers have access to (that was certainly the case when I worked for BTopenworld).

If the emails are recent, he's on broadband and have access to his machine, I guess you could check to see if his current IP matches the one in the email (clearly not an option with 99% of dialup ISPs).

If you want to pursue it, use the method I outlined to forward the email to the relevant ISP abuse department. If your email happens to get through to someone who can be arsed, they may track it down and warn them.

You'll be none the wiser as to the outcome. Sorry, that's just how it is.

I suppose if you knew he was on broadband, you could try doing things with the IP address, but that's a) out of the scope of this discussion, b) illegal and c) beyond my knowledge anyway.

edit - here's an after thought. In the header is a line starting "helo=" followed by the netbios name for his PC (sometimes, not always). In the example header I showed in that post of mine, it was kebab sommit or other. Anyway, check the header to see what the Helo line reads... maybe if you find a word there you'll recognise it as something he might have used, if he was a friend of yours. Long shot, worth a try. Takes seconds.

[gamelife]

Just that a freind of mine said that you can easily find out personnel info, including where they live, street, number etc and other details by having an IP address? it may be illegal but it can be done, somehow??

[Super Stu]

You're friend is talking bollocks, imho. IP addresses are allocated to you dynamically in most cases. Every 2 hours when Freeserve kicks you 56k users off, you're assigned a new one. I gather broadband users can keep their allocated IP address for quite some time, or even indefinately, but still, quite how all this personal information is available is beyond me.

Like I said, unless the data is physically on his PC (and ergo you hack access to the information), then the only other way to get it is to contact his ISP (who will refuse to give you such information, presumably under the data protection act).

From the IP address, you can establish the ISP. From the email header, you may even be able to guess which part of the country the email originated, if his hostmask is included in it.

Beyond that, you'll need Neo to find the information for you. Which is just as well, as kids would be at even higher risk from Pedos.

PM me the header if you like (complete), I'll take a look.

[goldbricker]

I think he may be getting confused with a whois request when somebody owns a domain name?

[Super Stu]

Agreed.

Thanks Nominet

[Gruce]

What about Nortan, when you get a hack warning you have the option to track it, how is this done?

[Dragon2k4]

Visualroute!

[Sketcz]

Surely having a dynamic IP that changes would make it easier to get up to nefarious activities without being caught?

I quite like having a changing IP, makes me harder to track. Doesnt it?

[Adrock]

Harder to track? No way unless your very cautious. Basically your ISP will have details of the IP you used at which point and when its changed and so on. So basically they could find out when any dodgy stuff went on then just look up who was using that IP at the time and you'd get caught out very easily.

But if you want to do stuff like be a tit on an irc channel and get banned you can, because you can reconnect and they cant do anything about it. But thats not really the same.