How to Trace an Originating IP

You can trace an originating IP.

Email makes communication quick, easy and inexpensive. Anyone with a computer and an Internet connection can send emails to friends or broadcast them to the world. Unfortunately, spammers and scam-artists utilize this same functionality to prey upon the masses. If you receive a questionable email and are curious who sent it, the email address itself may be meaningless. However, emails still have to be routed through the Internet via a series of IP addresses. This series starts where the sender connects to the Internet, even if they use a free email account whose server is located on the other side of the world. By tracking these IP addresses, you can find the sender's geographic location.

Instructions

1. Locate the header information in the email you wish to trace. This will look like a confusing mass of undecipherable text, easily distinguishable from the easy-to-read body of the email, but will end with something like "Content-transfer-encoding ..." You will probably have to enable viewing this information, but the procedure for this differs between programs and services.

   For example, in Gmail, you click the arrow by "reply" and select "show original." In Yahoo, you click "actions" and then "few full headers." In Outlook, you click "internet headers" in the "message options" window.

2. Copy the headers by selecting the text and pressing CTRL + C. If you select too much, that is alright; most look-up tools will ignore anything extra. In fact, you could press CTRL + A to select everything and then CTRL + C to copy it all, and it will still work in most trace tools.

3. Visit a trace tool site such as Find-IP-Address, What Is My IP Address or IP Address Location.

4. Paste the copied header information into the rectangular box on the tool page. You may also need to enter the "captcha" security text to verify you are a real person. Press enter or submit. The tool will display the textual and/or visual location of the originator's IP.

References

• What Is My IP: How To Trace an Email Address
• Blogspot: Identify and Trace the Originating IP of Fake Mail
• Gmail: Message Headers
• What Is My AP Address: Trace Email Address Source
• IP Address Location: Track and Trace Email Header with Free Email Tracing Tools
• Find-IP-Address: Email Finder - Email Search