Determining Who Really Sent That E-mail

Reader Wayne Gray writes: Is there any way I can track where an e-mail is coming from, as in city and state or country? I'm being scammed, and I would like to find out by who.

Sort of, but don't get your hopes up.

Every e-mail contains the IP address of the sender. Whether or not that is a real IP address is another question entirely, since this is easy to forge. However, if you are dealing with someone you think may not have the technical capability to forge his e-mail address, it's definitely worth checking out.

First you need to get the IP address. This is found in the headers of the message, which is normally hidden from view. If you use Outlook, just right-click on a message and click Options. The sender's IP address will be listed as "X-Originating-IP" or next to the "Received: from" field. If you use Yahoo! Mail, you can get this information by clicking "Full Headers" in the bottom right of the message display. (This is a cursory description of what can be a very lengthy process. You can find a lot more detail on tracking e-mail senders, including how to deal with multiple "Received" headers and other problems, by checking out this extensive page or this lengthy tutorial.)

What you do next with the IP address is up to you. You can try plugging into a location service like IP2Location.com, but those results are not terribly reliable. Forged IP addresses will make for even worse results.

You're better off, if you feel you are the victim of a crime, simply reporting the person to the relevant authorities: Either the ISP that originated the e-mail for more mundane infractions, or your local police and/or the FBI in case your life is being threatened or you're facing a large monetary loss. (The FBI's cybercrime division is located here.) Again, nothing may come of this either, but you'll probably find it more effective than trying to trace an IP address yourself.

Good luck!