Can Anonymous Email be tracked?

Question

I work at a restaurant, and from our website we received an anonymous complaint about myself. Everyone has suspicions that it came from within the restaurant (a little beeotch of a waitress) but cannot be sure. Is there any way to find out? It was sent through the website's send information forum, and the person left all fields blank.

Answer 1

It might leave the IP address from where it was sent, but probably not.



Dane

Answer 2

Yes but not without some serious effort on your part. IP addresses are attached to just about everything we do online so YES, an email COULD be traced back to it's original source. But keep in mind that this greatly depends on the record keeping of other entities that control the various servers that your email travelled thru enroute to you. AND then you have to take into consideration of wether or not these companies will deem this to be important enough to research. And lastly, does the person who oversees this stuff actually remember your IP or the IP in question out of the thousands upon millions of IP's recorded daily.



While it IS possible to track the email, it's highly unlikely or not too probable that it WILL be traced.

Answer 3

The only way to tell if it can be tracked is to try to track it and see. It may be very easy to track or it may be very hard. If you want to send me the email's full headers privately (I do not need the contents, but I need the full headers), I'll take a look and at least give you a basic idea of how traceable it's likely to be.

Answer 4

Yes, you can trace it back to the ip where the email was sent out.



It depends on what email client you are using. You can show the full header of the email to see it or look into the message source.



Highlight the email. Go to File,Properties. Click on 'Details' tab, then click on Message Source, you should see something like below. You can then find out the ip address from here.



Received: (qmail 27416 invoked from network); 22 Nov 2009 12:35:04 -0000

Received: from unknown (HELO p3pismtp01-021.prod.phx3.xxxxxxxx.net) ([10.6.12.2])

(envelope-sender )

by p3plsmtp03-06.prod.phx3.secureserver.net (qmail-1.03) with SMTP

for ; 22 Nov 2009 12:35:04 -0000

X-IP-SPAM: Suspect

Received: from smtp-verifiedoptin-01.aweber.com ([207.106.200.7])

by p3pismtp01-021.prod.phx3.secureserver.net with ESMTP; 22 Nov 2009 05:35:04 -0700

DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; d=aweber.com; s=dkim_s1024; c=relaxed/simple;

q=dns/txt; i=@aweber.com; t=1258893303;

h=Sender:Subject:Date:From:List-Unsubscribe:To:MIME-version:Content-type;

bh=OPfJmC505Xm3v5NdxNOX14ATMi0=;

b=LW5L7s4IUci1yPgKW9b2Iu0B2+eN/ErbAWMgeeY50plW3bc0o+Tx3Z+o

iO6CKHEnPAYk97fj+qKuo1yc9v2n5FAPRz44TCJZmBH5Iq94WL4pUh2yAxdn

zh0RLr3Bs6mOXheZ4xHHO+qsjc0oVm6tYDj8AHc09/4=;

Received: (qmail 2972 invoked by uid 0); 22 Nov 2009 12:35:03 -0000

Message-ID: <4B.AC.12497.7FF290B4@ec2>

MIME-version: 1.0

Content-type: multipart/alternative; boundary="_----------=_125889330129380"

To: "xxx"

From: "xxx"

Sender: [e-mail]

X-Loop: [e-mail]

X-Mailer: AWeber 4.0

X-Subscription: Subscribed on 11/21/2009, via web form, by 68.36.169.27, from http://xxxxxxx.com/xxxxxxxx

X-Verification: Verified by 68.36.169.27

X_Id: 1084243:11-22-2009-07-32-20:[e-mail]/1084243

Date: Sun, 22 Nov 2009 07:35:03 -0500

List-Unsubscribe: ,

Subject: xxxxxxxxxxxxx!

X-Nonspam: None

Answer 5

You should tell the person who organizes your website to correct this loophole.

Most websites with an online contact feature will not submit the form unless all fields are filled out.

If the restaurant boss has any integrity, he/she will disregard any anonymous communication

Answer 6

Sadly no.



But you can always swing the lamp and put on a Fedora. Next stop: dark alleyway!



Also, 'send info' forms and 'emails' Are COMPLETELY different. You can trace emails, but not send info forms.