Trace email -- who sent you that email?

"Who sent you that email and where are they located?"

With this tutorial as your guide, a little digging in the right places, and email analysis tools like eMailTrackerPro, you can in many cases figure out who sent you that nasty spam email and report them to the proper authorities!

1. Use eMailTrackerPro
2. Email Internet Headers
3. 'Received' Headers
4. The Sender's IP Address
5. Report Email Abuse
6. Leaked Sender Information
7. Final Warnings

In fact, people who use Yahoo or Hotmail email, thinking that their true identity and location are hidden, might be very surprised to find out that the IP address of the computer used to send the spam email can be uncovered and traced with eMailTrackerPro, many times leading directly to a person.

1. Use eMailTrackerPro

The first step is to use an email analysis tool like eMailTrackerPro, which will automatically analyze an email and its headers and provide a report similar to the following:

Sample eMailTrackerPro Identification Report for a spam email.

Tracing an email address: If you do not have an actual email message, but only have an email address, you can trace the address its email server. However it should be noted that email addresses can be easily forged, the results from tracing an email address may not be related to the true sender.

In most cases, using an email tracking tool like eMailTrackerPro to trace an email message you have received is your best option. To trace an email message received by someone else, have them forward the message to you as an attachment (just forwarding the message itself will show them as the sender). You can then open the attached message and copy the email header, start eMailTrackerPro and paste the header for analysis.

But, if you want to understand how email tracer tools work, continue reading...

2. Email Internet Headers

Every received email has Internet Headers. Using Microsoft Outlook as an example (other mail programs are very similar), just follow these steps to view the headers:

1. Right-click on the mail message that is still in your Outlook Inbox
2. Select 'Options...' from the resulting popup menu
3. Examine the 'Internet Headers' in the resulting 'Message Options' dialog

TIP: Right-click in the 'Internet Headers' field and click on 'Select All' in the popup menu (or type ctrl-A). Then right-click again and click on 'Copy' in the popup menu (or type ctrl-C). Finally, paste all the Internet Headers into your favorite text editor for full examination (such as 'Notepad', included with Windows).

Example: What you see will be very similar to the following (with 'line numbers' added for clarity and discussion in following sections):

1: Received: from tes1a623.OneMail.com.sg ([203.127.89.129]) by visualroute.com (8.11.6) id f9CIVSk24480; Tue, 12 Oct 2004 12:31:29 -0600 (MDT)
2: Message-Id: <200110121831.f9CIVSk24480@s2.domain.com>
3: Received: from drb.com (IIM1608 [203.127.89.138]) by tes1a623.OneMail.com.sg with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2448.0)
4:   id 4XNK9ATR; Wed, 13 Oct 2004 01:19:10 +0800
5: From: paylesslongdistance@somedomain.com
6: To: <>
7: Subject: Long Distance - 4.9 cents per min - NO FEES!
8: Date: Tue, 12 Oct 2004 13:24:26 -0400
9: X-Sender: paylesslongdistance@yahoo.com
10: X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1
11: Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"
12: X-Priority: 3
13: X-MSMail-Priority: Normal
14: X-UIDL: 8`Y!!0GR!!"?H"!k:O!!
15: Status: U

Header Line Syntax: The Internet Header Fields are just a series of text lines, where each line looks like:

Header-Name: Header-Value

And if a line starts with a tab or spaces, like line 4 above, that line is a continuation of the previous Header-Value line. So, the Header-Name Received in line 3 has a Header-Value that spans lines 3 and 4.

3. 'Received' Headers

The most important header field for tracking purposes is the Received header field, which usually has a syntax similar to:

Received: from ? by ? via ? with ? id ? for ? ; date-time

Where from, by, via, with, id, and for are all tokens with values within a single Header-Value, which may span multiple lines. Note: Some mail servers may not include all of these tokens -- or additional tokens/values may be added to this field, but now you are prepared to break it apart and understand it.

Every time an email moves through a new mail server, a new Received header line (and possibly other header lines, like line 2 above) is added to the beginning of the headers list. This is similar to FedEx package tracking, when your package enters a new sorting facility and is 'swiped' through a tracking machine.

This means that as you read the Received headers from top to bottom, that you are gradually moving closer to the computer/person that sent you the email.

But please note that as you read through the Received header fields and get closer to the computer/person that sent you the email, you need to consider the possibility that the sender added one or more false Received header lines to the list (at the time, the senders beginning of the list) in an attempt to redirect you to another location and prevent you from finding the true sender. But, now that you know false header lines are possible, just stay alert.

You will probably find it very useful to break a single Received line into multiple lines, with one token per line. Namely, the header line:

Received: from tes1a623.OneMail.com.sg ([203.127.89.129]) by visualroute.com (8.11.6) id f9CIVSk24480; Tue, 12 Oct 2004 12:31:29 -0600 (MDT)

is much easier to read and understand when formatted so that each token is on a new line, as in:

Received:
  from tes1a623.OneMail.com.sg ([203.127.89.129])
  by   visualroute.com (8.11.6)
  id   f9CIVSk24480
  ;    Tue, 12 Oct 2004 12:31:29 -0600 (MDT)

4. The Sender's IP Address

For tracking purposes, we are most interested in the from and by tokens in the Received header field. In general, you are looking for a pattern similar to:

Received: from BBB (dns-name [ip-address]) by AAA ...
Received: from CCC (dns-name [ip-address]) by BBB ...
Received: from DDD (dns-name [ip-address]) by CCC ...

In other words, mail server AAA received the email from BBB and provides as much information about BBB, including the IP Address BBB used to connect to AAA. This patterns repeats itself on each Received line. The syntax of the from token most times looks like:

name (dns-name [ip-address])

Where: name is the name the computer has named itself. Most of the time we never look at this name because it can be intentionally misnamed in an attempt to foil your tracking (but it may leak the windows computer name). dns-name is the reverse dns lookup on the ip-address. ip-address is the ip-address of the computer used to connect to the mail server that generated this Received header line. So, the ip-address is gold to us for tracking purposes.

The by token syntax just provides us with the name that the mail server gives itself. But since the last mail server could be under the control of a spammer, we should not trust this name.

So, what is crucial for tracking, is to pay attention to the trail of ip-address in the from tokens and not necessarily the host name provided to us in the by tokens. Hopefully an example will make the reason why very clear:

1: Received: from tes1a623.OneMail.com.sg ([203.127.89.129]) by visualroute.com (8.11.6) id f9CIVSk24480; Tue, 12 Oct 2004 12:31:29 -0600 (MDT)
3: Received: from drb.com (IIM1608 [203.127.89.138]) by tes1a623.OneMail.com.sg with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2448.0)

If you ignore line 1, you would conclude from line 3 that mail server tes1a623.OneMail.com.sg sent you an email, but this would be wrong. When you trace to the host name tes1a623.OneMail.com.sg, you are actually tracing to the IP Address lookup on that host name, which is 192.9.200.230. But as you can see from line 1, the IP Address used was really 203.127.89.129. Do not be fooled by this attempted misdirection by spammers and fraudsters.

Determine the IP Address of the Sender: Using the example email headers above and analyzing the Received header lines we can conclude:

• A Visualware employee received an email
• which came from visualroute.com (line 1)
• which came from tes1a623.OneMail.com.sg (line 1; line 3 confirms)
• but whose ip-address used was 203.127.89.129 (line 1)
• which came from drb.com/IIM1608 (line 3)
• but whose ip-address used was 203.127.89.138 (line 3)

So, we have just tracked this email to the source -- IP Address 203.127.89.138.

TIP: Practice! Track down the emails received from friends and family. Since you know where they are really located, that will help you to analyze the Internet Headers. You will quickly gain experience and confidence in your ability to track down the computer/person that sent you an email message.

5. Report Email Abuse

In most cases eMailTrackerPro will identify the IP address of the sender's computer, the sender's geographical location, and the company providing Internet service (or ISP) for the IP address. Reports for email abuse -- such as spam, email-borne viruses and email threats -- should be directed to the sender's ISP.

In eMailTrackerPro, spam can be easily reported by following the steps below:

• Right-click on the Visualware system tray icon, and select the 'Abuse Reporting' menu option.
  
  
• Select 'Spam email', paste enter the email header of the spam message into the box, and select 'Produce Report'.
  
  
• A report will be generated in your web browser, which can then be easily emailed to the network provider. Copy the ISP's email address indicated in the top section of the report. In Internet Explorer select 'File, Send Page by Email' then paste the email address in the 'To:' field, and send the message.

The registered 'owner' of the sender's IP address can be viewed in the 'further owner details' section of the eMailTrackerPro report, in the 'Domain Owner Information' column.

6. Leaked Sender Information

The Internet Headers for an email message may contain some really interesting information about the sender.

A) Windows Computer Name: It appears that the Windows computer name is sometimes leaked. Consider the following partial header information from an actual email:

Received: from hanksdell (11-22-33-44.xyz.net [11.22.33.44]) by visualroute.com (8.8.5) id SAA26331; Mon, 11 Oct 2004 18:46:53 -0600 (MDT)

Where we can clearly see the IP Address of the sender, but we can also see the computer name of hanksdell. While the computer name can be named anything, in this case, I might assume that the person is named Hank and uses a Dell computer.

This computer name may be intentionally misleadingly named or not be meaningful but it can become very useful confirming information if law enforcement can confirm that the name of the suspect's computer matches the name in the email header.

B) Timezone Information: Consider lines 3 and 4 from the Internet Header discussion above:

3: Received: from drb.com (IIM1608 [203.127.89.138]) by tes1a623.OneMail.com.sg with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2448.0)
4:     id 4XNK9ATR; Wed, 13 Oct 2004 01:19:10 +0800

Notice that in the Internet Headers, when a time is displayed, many times it is followed with a plus/minus and four digits, which represent HHMM (hour and minutes) from GMT (Greenwich Mean Time), or London, UK time. Plus means east of GMT. Minus means west of GMT.

So, according to +0800, the server is 8 hours east of GMT. TIP: Go into the Windows Control panel and enter into the Date/Time dialog, where there is a Time Zone list. This time zone appears to be in Singapore. Then, the .sg in tes1a623.OneMail.com.sg means Singapore, which is one more confirmation of this information. A final confirmation comes from performing a VisualRoute trace 203.127.89.129 (the IP Address for tes1a623.OneMail.com.sg). TIP: Trace to the IP Address, not the host name.

C) X-Mailer: This will usually tell you the mailer software used by the sender of the email. Consider:

10: X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Pro Version 4.1

This may or may not be immediately useful, but it can be very useful if there is a follow-up investigation by authorities.

D) X-Originating-IP: If you are attempting to track down an email received from a Hotmail email account, look for the X-Originating-IP header field, which will tell you the IP Address of the computer that sent the email. Consider:

1: Received: from hotmail.com (f105.pav1.hotmail.com [64.4.31.105]) by s2.xyz.com (8.11.6) id f9BIvve34655; Mon, 11 Oct 2004 12:58:00 -0600 (MDT)
2: Received: from mail pickup service by hotmail.com with Microsoft SMTPSVC; 3:     Mon, 11 Oct 2001 11:57:51 -0700 4: Received: from 202.156.2.147 by pv1fd.pav1.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP; 5:     Mon, 11 Oct 2004 18:57:51 GMT 6: X-Originating-IP: [202.156.2.147]

However, notice that we could have obtained the same IP Address information by examining the Received header fields. But it is nice to have this extra confirmation.

7. Final Warnings

Please pay attention to these warnings when attempting to track email messages:

A) Host Names vs IP Addresses: Always base your tracking decisions based upon the IP Addresses that you find in the header information and not on host names (which are a lookup from the IP Address anyway). Because mapping an IP Address into a host name and then back into an IP Address may yield a different IP Address.

B) False Header Information: Be aware that spammers may try to insert fake Received: header lines into the Internet Headers of the email message to confuse you. Just follow the trail through the Received: header fields from mail server to mail server and use some common sense when the information makes no sense.

C) False IP Address: The IP Address that you finally end up at is the IP Address of the computer that sent the email. But is that computer the real sender, or a computer that was broken into, so that a false email could be sent. Or the sender could try to hide behind an 'anonymizer' service -- where you will get to the IP Address of the 'anonymizer' company.

D) IP Addresses Change: Do not assume that the sender's computer has a fixed, constant IP Address. This may be true in some cases, but most people who dial into the Internet almost always get a different IP Address each and every time they connect into the Internet. However, all is not lost. Many times you can report the IP Address and full email Internet Headers (which many times contain time-of-day information) to the person's ISP and the ISP can track this down to a unique end-user (by examining login and logout logs) and take action.

E) Viruses: Do not assume the worst of the person sending the email. They may have just been infected with a virus, which is using a person's computer to spread itself.

F) Open Mail Servers: Do not assume the worst of the company whose mail server was used to send the original email. They may be involved in the spam, but they also may just have a misconfigured email server, which is allowing a spammer to send the email through their mail server.