Learn How to Track an Email Address

By Sophia Munoz | January 31, 2010

Emails are a wonderful thing. It is so simple to contact someone, send them information and receive a reply in just a matter of seconds. No waiting for the postman and no costly postage stamps. If you are wanting to contact a lot of people in a short period of time, this is simple to do with email. It is also very simple for people to contact you also. Sometimes this can be a bad thing. If you become the target of scams, identity theft, harassing emails or a bad computer virus, then you know that having an email address can be a pain. But did you know that it is possible to find out who has been sending you these malicious emails? Read on to discover how to do a reverse email search.

It is important that you familiarize yourself with the components that make up an email address. Arming yourself with this knowledge will make it easier when you begin to study how to track an email address.

The first part of an email address is the header. This is the most important piece of information that will provide you with the clues that you need to trace an email. So let’s look at a header more closely.

Uncovering the header to the email is not always easy. Some email providers will have the headers clearly revealed and others will make it a little harder to discover. The best way to find out how to uncover your email headers is to do a search for your email provider and find out how to uncover the header. Each email provider will have a different way of uncovering your headers.

Now that you have the header opened, you need to find the part that says received from. This is where the gold lies. It will have two sections that you are looking for, “from and by”. The “from” part shows you which machine is sending the message and the “by” part will show which machine is accepting it.

In this section of the header, you will see an IP address. You can easily spot this because it is a series of numbers that are broken up by periods. This IP address can be plugged into a reverse DNS lookup service that can be found on the Internet. There are a few free to use service providers available. This IP address will reveal the user’s ISP or employer.

Another thing that you can do once you have the ISP address is to locate a service that will show you where the ISP is located geographically. You can narrow this down by city and state which will make it easier to track down the sender.

That is the basics of how to do a reverse email search. On occasion, it will not be helpful if the sender is using a economizer that will cloak the IP address. Spammers will often place fake “received from” headers in the emails that will make it almost impossible to be able to track an email address. But if you have access to the right information, you can learn how to do a reverse email search.

Sophia Munoz is an article marketer who is versed into new gadgets. She has written hundreds of articles for specialized magazines and article directories. If you want to find out more about how to do a reverse email search, visit us for the latest breakthroughs!

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