Finally a straight answer to this often asked question . If you have an email and you need to locate or identify the actual person that sent it you need to read this article.
Copyright (c) 2008 Ed Opperman
I'm a private investigator and see this question asked online everyday. Usually some nice normal person going about their life has received a disturbing email. They do not recognize the sender and they want to identify exactly who the email sender is. The email could be something small like "I don't like the way you coach the little league team" or it could be something serious like "I'm sleeping with your husband". It could be defamatory accusation that was sent to you and CC'd to a hundred people you know or work with. So you can see the reasons for wanting to trace an email acn vary greatly in subject and seriousness. That makes my job interesting.
Now usually when I see the question "How Can I Trace an Email?" the reply is a something along these lines: First you need to obtain the email headers by going into your email account and clicking on your settings. Then you need to get the IP address from the headers and run a trace on that to find the senders ISP.
Well that's great advice if you want to find out the senders Internet Service Provider but usually they want to find out who the heck says they're sleeping with their husband! My next problem with this advice is that it can return very misleading information. For instance when you are examining a herder you will find the senders IP address but you will also find your own. In fact it appears the information in the header is somewhat reversed and it is incredible easy for a novice attempting to examine a header to wind up tracing their own IP address and not the senders.
When a person asks "How can I trace an Email" they really want to know how to identify the sender of the email. Many times the question is being answered by a computer expert more interested in technical IP#s and not a professional investigator interested in locating and identifying a real person. So to answer the question in the spirit of how it was asked is an entirely different answer. In fact I don't believe it could be answered in the average question and answer section of the average "How To" site.
The simple answer is to perform an reverse email search in various free online reverse email look up sites. If it's not there or it's obviously fictitious information then move on.
Next you can try to put the email address in the search engine and see if anything turns up there. If you have tried these methods and still need an answer you need to hire a professional at finding people and someone who specializes in email tracing and online investigations.
There are more and more professional investigators that have taken the time and expense to educate themselves of the subject and get the proper training to conduct this type of investigation. But you must beware of the online sleuth software scams that promise miraculous results. If you are going to hire a professional do your homework and due diligence. A professional email trace report can take weeks to complete. So you can't expect some online instant search to provide you the accurate information you require.
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