Buzz
The first thing you do upon receiving an email notification is to check the sender, right? It's the quickest way to gauge the sender and potential content. But did you know each email comes with more information than what appears in most email services? There's a wealth of sender information in the email header that can be used to determine the sender's location.
How to locate the sender's position via email?
1. Why track the origin of an email address?
Before diving into how to locate an email sender, let's discuss why you'd want to.
In today's world, suspicious emails are all too common. Scam emails, spam, and malware often uninvitedly infiltrate our inboxes. Tracing an email can sometimes reveal who sent it or where it came from.
Alternatively, tracing an email's origin can help block spam or abusive content, aiming to permanently remove it from your inbox. Server administrators monitor emails for similar reasons.
2. How to pinpoint an email sender's location
Tracking an email address to find the sender involves examining the full header of the email. The email header contains routing and metadata information - details typically overlooked but crucial for tracing an email's origin.
Most email apps don't show the full email header by default because it's packed with technical data that's often unnecessary. Yet, nearly all email services offer a way to view the full header. You just need to know where to look and what to look for.
- In Gmail: Log into your Gmail account, open the email of interest. Click the three dots menu in the upper right corner of the email and select Show original.
- In Outlook: Double-click the email you want to investigate, then go to File > Properties.
- In Apple Mail: Open the email you wish to trace, then navigate to View > Message > Raw Source.
There are countless email services available, but these are just three of the most commonly used today. If you're using a different email service, you can find how to access the full email header online.
There's a lot to see, but to locate the sender's position via email using their IP address, focus on the Received: from line. Here, you can find the sender's IP address, which can be used to pinpoint their location with the help of IP lookup tools like WolframAlpha (https://www.wolframalpha.com/) or MX Toolbox (https://mxtoolbox.com/SuperTool.aspx).
For instance, upon obtaining the IP address, go to MX Toolbox website, paste the IP into the search field, switch the search type to Reverse Lookup, and hit Enter. You'll see information related to the sending server displayed.
Unless the original IP address is one of the millions of private IPs. In that case, you'll encounter the following message:
The following IP ranges are private:
- 0.0.0.0-10.255.255.255
- 172.16.0.0-172.31.255.255
- 192.168.0.0-192.168.255.255
- 224.0.0.0-239.255.255.255
Looking up an IP address within these ranges will yield no results.
Your success in pinpointing the email sender's location varies depending on the email service provider used by the sender. Attempting to trace an email from a Gmail account will only reveal the last Google server's location that processed the email, not the original sender's email address.
