Curious About Who Is Sending You Email? Find Out Online Now
Randy Eadon
September 12, 2008
Email is a very fast and convenient form of communication. It helps you stay in touch with friends, family and other acquaintances who live far away, as well as allows you to contact and conduct business. However, unfortunately, one of the problems with owning an electronic mailing address is receiving spam and other unwanted emails that may contain viruses, spyware or other malware.
Therefore, should you ever receive a mysterious email and you are not sure to whom it belongs, you can find out more about it by performing a few searches online. To give you an idea of the different ways you can investigate an e-mail on the net, the following are some examples:
Reverse email lookup – This is a service that enables you to look up an address by simply entering it into a search field. You type in the full e-mail (I.E. "name@domainname.com", and then search. It is unlikely that you will discover any information about the person for free, as there is no universal database. However, you can pay to access a commercial directory which could be very helpful in revealing info.
IP Lookup – Every e-message has an Internet Protocol (IP) address linked to it. You can lookup this code and find out details about the senders computer, such as their network, country, city, and so on. To find the IP, you will need to view the full headers of the message. Accessing the headers may not be the same for different email programs, so you may need to find out how to do this. The numerical code you are looking for should consist of four groups of 1, 2, or 3 numbers separated by dots.
Search engine – Enter the e-mail into your favorite search engine and see if it has been posted anywhere on the net, allowing you to link it to a person, business, spammer, etc.
Social networking site – Millions of online users engage in social networking. Many of these websites allow you to search for a person by entering in their e-mail. Plug in the address you have, to find out if the person has a profile on one of these networks.
As you can see, there is more than one way to try and find information about an unknown e-mail sender, so if you have no luck with a reverse email search or don´t wish to pay to access a directory, try another online lookup.
Therefore, should you ever receive a mysterious email and you are not sure to whom it belongs, you can find out more about it by performing a few searches online. To give you an idea of the different ways you can investigate an e-mail on the net, the following are some examples:
Reverse email lookup – This is a service that enables you to look up an address by simply entering it into a search field. You type in the full e-mail (I.E. "name@domainname.com", and then search. It is unlikely that you will discover any information about the person for free, as there is no universal database. However, you can pay to access a commercial directory which could be very helpful in revealing info.
IP Lookup – Every e-message has an Internet Protocol (IP) address linked to it. You can lookup this code and find out details about the senders computer, such as their network, country, city, and so on. To find the IP, you will need to view the full headers of the message. Accessing the headers may not be the same for different email programs, so you may need to find out how to do this. The numerical code you are looking for should consist of four groups of 1, 2, or 3 numbers separated by dots.
Search engine – Enter the e-mail into your favorite search engine and see if it has been posted anywhere on the net, allowing you to link it to a person, business, spammer, etc.
Social networking site – Millions of online users engage in social networking. Many of these websites allow you to search for a person by entering in their e-mail. Plug in the address you have, to find out if the person has a profile on one of these networks.
As you can see, there is more than one way to try and find information about an unknown e-mail sender, so if you have no luck with a reverse email search or don´t wish to pay to access a directory, try another online lookup.
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