How to Trace an IP Address From a Sender

Email headers contain routing information, which includes the sender's IP address.

You can trace an IP (Internet Protocol) address from a sender using the message header of an email. The message header contains a host of information about the email. It shows the sender and receiver email addresses, the mail servers that routed the email, any attachments found in the email, date sent and received and the type of email sent -- plain text or HTML. There are several IP addresses found in a message header, which correspond to the different mail servers that routed the email and the sender's computer's IP address.

Instructions

Checking Email Headers In Outlook

1. Open an email.

2. Go to "Message" tab and click "Dialog Box Launcher" from the "Options" group.

3. View the message header in "Internet headers" box.

4. Look for the lines "Received: from..." There could be several lines because the email was routed from the sender to different mail servers.

5. Look for an entry: client-IP. This is the IP address of the sender. If there is no client-IP entry, the last "Received: from..." entry is the originating IP address.

Checking Email Headers In Gmail

1. Open the email message.

2. Click the down arrow next to the "Reply" icon and click "Show original."

3. Find the entry: client-IP. This is the IP address from the sender.

Checking Email Headers In Yahoo Mail.

1. Open an email message.

2. Click "Actions" and click "View Full Header."

3. Look for the entry: x-originating-IP. This is the IP address where the email came from.

References

• Microsoft: View E-mail Headers
• Microsoft: View E-mail Message Headers
• Gmail: Reading full email headers
• Gmail: Message headers