can I trace an email?

Question

I keep getting these" job offers " from people over seas saying that they want to send me checks to deposit and then I send them money back , i got one today saying that i won a twenty thousand dollar lottery. I know that it's all scams but once I get the ip address can I go to a web site that will trace it back to the exact computer that sent it or at least the country it was sent from. Can someone tell me how to send a virus to completely destroy these cyber terrorists computers. Why are authuritys not doing something to stop these scam artist?

Answer 1

Depends on your email provider, but if you can look at the message source (RFC 2822) then you can get an idea about where the message came from. There's a bunch of hidden information on every email that usually isn't displayed.



I use gmail, and there's an option on a message to "Show Original" that works. If you use POP or IMAP to check your mail, I know Outlook can show you "Message Headers" if you click on Options when the message is open. Outlook Express has a "message source" option somewhere that can show you the info too.



If you find what I'm talking about, it will look kind of like this:



Received: by 10.114.184.3 with SMTP id h3cs913847waf;

Thu, 24 May 2007 11:04:39 -0700 (PDT)

Received: by 10.35.89.10 with SMTP id r10mr667897pyl.1180029878769;

Thu, 24 May 2007 11:04:38 -0700 (PDT)

Return-Path:

Received: from smtp.somewhere.com (mailX.somewhere.com [x.x.x.x])

by mx.myisp.com with ESMTP id f75si4015098pye.2007.05.24.11.04.38;

Thu, 24 May 2007 11:04:38 -0700 (PDT)

Received: from mailhub.somewhere.com (x.x.x.x) by

other.mailhub.somewhere.com (x.x.x.x) with Microsoft

SMTP Server (TLS) id 8.0.700.0; Thu, 24 May 2007 11:03:58 -0700

...



If you start at the top and work your way down you will see some lines that start with "Received:". A message passes through a number of servers on its route to your mailbox, and each server writes a "Received:" line saying its own name and IP address and the IP address of the server it received the mail from. Understanding how these work takes a bit of practice, but you can trace the route of a message this way.



Be careful -- some of those Recieved lines could be fake. That's why you start at the top and work down. The one at the top is sure to be valid. It's from your ISP and you can hopefully trust them. The next one down is from a server that sent it to your ISP, or maybe it's another server that your ISP controls. Anyway, as you work your way back along the route you may eventually get to a point where the rest are spoofed, or maybe they didn't try to cover their tracks at all and they are all correct, who knows.



In any case, this info is cool to see, but you shouldn't try to attack someone. First of all, that's illegal. Next, you might be attacking someone innocent. Sometimes someone misconfigures their mail server or gets hijacked so that their mail server becomes an open relay. Basically one of those "Received:" lines could be the entry point where some innocent person or company had their server hijacked and they're being used to inject spam.



It's generally not worth the trouble, but if you wanted to take some sort of action you could try to contact the owner of the server that you think is responsible and let them know if they're relaying spam that isn't from their domain.



//////// UPDATE



From the headers you just posted, it looks like the message was sent from 172.176.49.254. I did a WHOIS query on ARIN and found that this is an AOL IP address. It probably belongs to an AOL customer whose box has been p0wned into a spam zombie.



There's not a lot you can do; that IP address might not even still be assigned to the infected computer.



The best defense is to have your ISP use better anti-spam technology -- it should be possible for them to detect that national-lottery.co.uk email addresses shouldn't be coming from AOL.

Answer 2

I suggest this service: http://phonedetectives.co - The best reverse cell phone lookup service.



It's a cheap service that works great! It could be used for a much deeper search. You can use it to get hold of different varieties of background reports, and in addition cell numbers, addresses and names.. you can get unlimited reports... I ran with this because I required to verify more numbers.



You can get the name, other phone number, address history, relatives, and much more about anyone! The completly free reverse phone lookup generally doesn't provide anything interesting. To get interesting information, money will must be paid. The free searches don't provide considerably more than what may be found through the phone directory or personal information and they simply require your email to send spam. The reverse phone detective search tool does work, but you should use just the service that I posted above. The last thing you want to do, is pay for a service and find the numbers you want to lookup are not available in their directory.



The service that I reccomend doesn't have any kind of problem , you won't get any bad surprise! Trust it!



Reverse Phone Lookup area gives you additional access to millions of public records, including:



+ Find out the source of a harassing ("prank") caller

+ Research a number that appeared on your phone bill

+ Locate an old friend from high school or college

+ Research "missed calls" on your caller ID that you don't recognize

+ Verify an address

+ And more...



PhoneDetectives - http://phonedetectives.co



Conduct an instant reverse phone lookup. 100% Confidentail and Instant Results!

Answer 3

reverse phone number search compiles hundreds of millions of phone book records to help locate the owner's name, location, time zone, email and other public information.



Use a reverse phone lookup to:

Get the identity of an unknown caller.

Identify an area code.

Recall the name of a person whose number you wrote down.

Identify an unfamiliar phone number that shows up on your bill.

https://tr.im/721a7

Answer 4

UGH, I get those all the time, I wish there was something to do also...bastards! I think it's from signing up for everything that comes our way, lol. I will check back to see if anyone knows how to get rid of these people..thanks for the good question ;)

Answer 5

don"t waste your time do this

BLOCK SENDERS LIST - SPAM



if you have yahoo mail and a lot of other like outlook



check other email programs for options like these



open email program



choose option



choose block senders



get yahoo email here http://www.yahoo.com/

Answer 6

It's not worth the trouble. Delete them, and get on with your life.