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.
Copyright (c) 2008 Ed Opperman
There are many different ways that you can use when you are tracing an email address. However, do you know why you would want to trace email? There are a couple of different reasons why people all over need to trace email.
Here are some of the more common reasons why people are tracing an email address back to the owner.
One: Are you getting a lot of spam email and you want to find out where it is coming from? This is one big reason why people are tracing an email address. When you trace email like this back to the owner you can stop them from sending you any other spam emails.
Unwanted junk mail can carry viruses that are harmful to your computer. Plus they are very irritating. Even if you have a spam filter catching your email it can be time consuming scanning it to make sure you are not missing an emails you actually do want to read!
Two: Are you looking for an old friend or family member? Sometimes email addresses are traced by somebody trying to locate someone they want to get together with again. By tracing an email address you will be able to find out where this person is currently at. Then you can contact them to renew the friendship or relationship with your family member.
Three: You have the email address and you want to do a reverse email search to find out who's it is.
Four: You have the address and the name of a person but you need to find out their e-mail address. This can be tricky as getting an email address and changing it is so easy to do.
These are four of the more common reasons why people everywhere trace email. You may even have your own reasons that are not so common. Why you are tracing an email address will only be important to you but you still need to know why you are doing the search.
This will make it easier for you find what you are looking for. So take some time to figure out what your reasons are. That will help you stay motivated if the search gets hard.
Ed Opperman has sinced written about articles on various topics from Mobile Phone Reviews, Phone Bills and Child Custody. Ed Opperman invites you to visit his cyber investigation website for all of your email search needs. He offers cyber stalking investigations , internet infidelity investigations, reverse email trace, and much more. To learn more about. Ed Opperman's top article generates over 90500 views. to your Favourites.