Does anyone know how to track an E-Mail address?

[flying_silverad]

Does anyone know how to track and find the origin of an E-Mail address?

 

[BlueNinja]

I found a tutorial site that may help- hold on, I'll try it; I am sure to have some spam here.

 

[BlueNinja]

Go to the headers section of an email from the person you want to track. There should be a "received from" part in it, then it will have a number after it like 63.349.76.1. Copy that number and put it in here:

https://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm?GetLocation

 

[Rocketmaniac]

Originally posted by Blue_Ninja_150
Go to the headers section of an email from the person you want to track. There should be a "received from" part in it, then it will have a number after it like 63.349.76.1. Copy that number and put it in here:

https://www.geobytes.com/IpLocator.htm?GetLocation

Very interesting.... I have always wondered how someone was tracked......

But I just tried it on a piece of spam I just received...... It had several numbers..... The first two I tried the website said "We are currently unable to locate the address"

Does this mean the person is behind a firewall?

 

[rabidsheeep]

are you trying to track the person who originated it? or is it a company?

most things are just tracked by ip's... errm, blue, i hope that aint yours cause there are IP hacks that can screw up your system a bit...

 

[Stymye]

https://www.dnsstuff.com/

 

[thomasrau]

Originally posted by Rocketmaniac
Very interesting.... I have always wondered how someone was tracked......

But I just tried it on a piece of spam I just received...... It had several numbers..... The first two I tried the website said "We are currently unable to locate the address"

Does this mean the person is behind a firewall?

SPAM often has forged headers, so the information (IP) may not be correct. Even if it is many spammers have their server shut down after sending out the mail. Many spammers sign up for a website using bogus info, get activated and immediately start spamming. Most all webhosts shut the spammer down when detected, spammer then moves on to a new host and starts all over.

 

[DynaSoar]

Originally posted by thomasrau
SPAM often has forged headers, so the information (IP) may not be correct. Even if it is many spammers have their server shut down after sending out the mail. Many spammers sign up for a website using bogus info, get activated and immediately start spamming. Most all webhosts shut the spammer down when detected, spammer then moves on to a new host and starts all over.

Worse yet, spammers will use addresses that are reserved by the IP designator organizations for intranet useage, or they'll use valid IPs that belong to an innocent bystander. Spammers are scum.

The only way you can truly track a sender (and this includes proving something came from a valid and unhidden IP) is to get the listing for the relevant incoming and outgoing logs from the sending, receiving and intermediary machines and verify it via message ID and time stamp. This is only possible if the machines have logging turned on. Considering the amount of traffic nowdays, very few actually do, or they'd have to have multiple DVD burners running contstantly to keep up with just these logs. To make things worse, spammers will often hijack web cache machines, whose sole job it is to intercept and translate http calls and forward web pages, to speed up web useage. Since most pages involve multiple http calls, these machines get enourmous useage and the logs would reflect that. Thus, these machines invariably have logging turned off.

There are other ways, but they typically involve getting permission from high powered machine owners to do things that would be very illegal if done without their permission, and that means proving your technical capability to do these things and not break a machine that possibly thousands of people rely on for access. And even then it requires the cooperation of the operators of those intermediate machines, who are typically so overworked with tasks more immediately necessary to keeping the mail moving that they don't have time to help you track spam, no matter how much they might like to.

I actually started a company to catch bad guys using methods considered questionable unless you had the proper authority. Still, our best catch rate was about 30%. That was acceptable for companies willing to sue the worst of the spammers, but it wasn't enough for me, so I quit.

Your best effort is spent to let the FTC know. Not only do they maintain a database of spam and spammers, but they are at the forefront for anti-spam legislation writing and justification.

"What we need are a few good old-fashioned hangings." -- FTC Commissioner Orson Swindell, at the FTC Spam Conference, 2003.

 

[flying_silverad]

Originally posted by Blue_Ninja_150
I found a tutorial site that may help- hold on, I'll try it; I am sure to have some spam here.

The e-mail address was an address that was embedded in one of those phoney auctions that put me out of business for a short time. Normally I wouldn't have access to it but one of the bidders asked a question to the seller (me) but what the hacker forgot was that he left his address in the Ebay info. I figured if he was dumb enough to do that, he might not have covered all of his/her tracks.

 

[Rocketmaniac]

Originally posted by flying_silverad
The e-mail address was an address that was embedded in one of those phoney auctions that put me out of business for a short time. Normally I wouldn't have access to it but one of the bidders asked a question to the seller (me) but what the hacker forgot was that he left his address in the Ebay info. I figured if he was dumb enough to do that, he might not have covered all of his/her tracks.

I hope you get him...... In some ways, the internet has gotten pretty ugly in the last few years.......