What Is An IP Address Trace & What Does It Mean?
Randy Eadon
November 04, 2008
Have you ever found your inbox full of spam and searched through the email headers to determine who thought you needed twenty different messages about increasing the size of a certain body part? In situations like this that involve spam and other senders that might have some reasons to disguise their true identity, the IP address attached to the email header can be essential. An IP address trace can help you determine what sections of the header, if any, have been forged, and where the message really originated.
Since the Internet has been placing tighter restrictions on spamming, and because the average user is becoming more discriminating when opening messages, those that continue to use unsolicited emails to advertise know that they walk a fine line. In order to disguise their actual address and personal information, people sometimes fake the sender line, replacing it with a more benign server. This is where an IP address comes in. By going backward from your email, which you know is correct, you can establish piece by piece the history of the message. An IP trace means retracing the steps the message took to reach your inbox, and using this information to determine if the sender box has been forged.
When tracing an IP address, you need to be aware that even pieces of it can be faked, so you have to look at the whole address, and not judge based on simply the last piece on information. Once you have looked at the information provided by the IP address to determine its origin, you have the original email and ISP address. Resources like reverse email lookups can help you find out more about the recipient of any email, taking as full advantage of the Internet as the spammer did.
Now that you have used an IP trace to determine the sender of an email, you can use a reverse email address lookup to discover more about the group or individual. Whether you use the information gathered to report Spam and other unsolicited email, or for personal reasons, accessing it is as easy as retracing an email's steps.
Since the Internet has been placing tighter restrictions on spamming, and because the average user is becoming more discriminating when opening messages, those that continue to use unsolicited emails to advertise know that they walk a fine line. In order to disguise their actual address and personal information, people sometimes fake the sender line, replacing it with a more benign server. This is where an IP address comes in. By going backward from your email, which you know is correct, you can establish piece by piece the history of the message. An IP trace means retracing the steps the message took to reach your inbox, and using this information to determine if the sender box has been forged.
When tracing an IP address, you need to be aware that even pieces of it can be faked, so you have to look at the whole address, and not judge based on simply the last piece on information. Once you have looked at the information provided by the IP address to determine its origin, you have the original email and ISP address. Resources like reverse email lookups can help you find out more about the recipient of any email, taking as full advantage of the Internet as the spammer did.
Now that you have used an IP trace to determine the sender of an email, you can use a reverse email address lookup to discover more about the group or individual. Whether you use the information gathered to report Spam and other unsolicited email, or for personal reasons, accessing it is as easy as retracing an email's steps.
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