How to Detect an IP Address for an Email

If you figure out how to detect an IP address, you can figure out where an email came from.

An IP address, a unique numerical code, identifies where an email came from. All email messages have an IP address, which shows the location of the Internet Service Provider who provided the Internet connection that was used to send the email. With a little sleuthing, you can find out which IP address your email was sent from.

Instructions

1. Open the email in question.

2. Click "Display More", "More" or "See All" near the top of the email. This will display all of the sender information and received information that came along with the email message.

3. Scroll through the list. If it is a short list, you will only see one "Received From" section of information. A few lines below "Received From" and "Reply To", you will see "IP Address." Or, you might only see the address itself, which is a series of numbers grouped together with dots between them. Copy down these numbers.

4. Scroll down the list if you see more than one "Received By" or more than one set of information. Sometimes, scammers use multiple hosts and servers to send email blindly. However, if you read all the way to the bottom, you'll locate the last IP address listed. This one is most likely the IP address of the sender.

5. Plug the IP address into one of the online IP search engines, to get information about the Internet Service Provider that provided the connection from which the email was sent. From there, you can find your sender.

References

• IP Address Location: Locator
• Compnetworking: IP Address