Email provides us with a world of convenience as far as communicating with our friends and loved ones are concerned. While before, we need to wait for days or weeks to receive a letter by snail mail, now with email we can receive it in a matter of minutes. Unfortunately, the anonymity of email messages can also be scary. We can now receive all manner of threatening emails without knowing who sent them. Of course, we can just delete these emails but at the back of our minds we would always be bothered. Is there someone out there who means us harm? Do we need to take precautions?



Fortunately, there is a quick way to deal with this problem using the information located in the email's header. The header normally includes the following information: the email address of the sender, the email address or addresses of the recipients, the date the email was sent and the subject (if the sender provided one). Once you have located the header, you can contact the email provider and inform them about the threatening emails you have received. These companies take complaints of this nature very seriously and you can be assured that they will take action accordingly.

However, the one thing they will not do is provide you with the name and address of the person who sent you the emails since they are constrained by the privacy provisions of their service agreement. In fact, they would also not provide this information to the proper authorities without a court order requiring them to do so.

Fortunately, there is a way to acquire this information: do a reverse search to find out who is behind a particular email address. All you need to do is login to a site that provides reverse search services and type in the email address whose sender you want to investigate. The site will then search its database and provide you with the name and address of the person who owns the email address. These sites could also provide you with the email address of a specific person. Just type in their first and last name, and the site will provide you with their email address if it is in their database.

Many of these sites provide their services for free, but these free services are limited in the depth of information they can provide you. If you want more detailed information you should consider using a paid service. Becoming a subscriber to such a service would allow you to do unlimited searches; you can also ask the service to do a background check on the owner of a particular email address. This background check would include information such as what properties they own, what professional licenses they hold and if they've ever been in an accident or declared bankruptcy. All of this information is gathered from public records. You can also reverse search social network sites such as Friendster and Facebook to see if the owner of a particular email address is a member. Thus, these email search sites can provide you with the peace of mind you need if you feel you are being stalked or threatened.