How to Track an Anonymous Email

Track the anonymous senders of bothersome emails.

There are so many websites on the Internet that allow people to send anonymous emails to other people. Some people use anonymous emails for harassing or threatening purposes. If they are just spam emails, you might want to filter them out by declaring them "Spam" on your email client. There are also some ways you can track the sender.

Instructions

1. Take a look at the email's header information. Some email clients have it disabled by default but you can easily view it from the menu. For instance, on Outlook Express, click "View" from the menu and go to "Options." Here, you will see the option for viewing headers of the email.

2. Look at the header information next to the "Received" field. You will most likely see two lines; the first one will be from your mail server while the other will be from the sender's mail server. You might recognize the second server's domain and track down the sender.

3. Take a look at the IP address in the header next to the "Received" field. If you don't recognize the server (in Step 2), you can determine the sender's IP address. This is the address that was used by the sender on his computer. Copy this IP address by selecting, right-clicking and choosing "Copy."

4. Look up the IP address on a reverse IP lookup website, for instance IPchecking.com, Psacake.com or ws.arin.net. On these websites, simply right-click in the IP field, and select "Paste" to paste the copied IP address. Then click the "Search" button. This will give you all the public information regarding the IP address's registrant.

References

• Iron Geek: How To Trace Fake or Anonymous E-mails

Resources

• ARIN: WHOIS Database Search
• IP Checking: Free IP Lookup
• PS Cake: Lookup IP Address