Is there anyway to trace anonymous emails?

Question

My daughter is receiving threatening emails. It is worded carefully and is between teens so the police can not assist us. I am concerned this is not a prank however and have learned to never underestimate teens. Is there any easy way I can find this person by the email address? It is an anonymous hotmail address and I am hoping for a name in order to contact parents. Help please!!

Answer 1

This is serious and its pathetic that the police wont help. You can easily set up a Keylogger SQL Php Code to track IP's but that might be hard. (I can do this method for you, just send me the other persons email to mine at [e-mail] and I will get the person's details for you)



OR, you can try these steps which most commonly work 40%.



Check the sending email address to see if you recognize it. Sometimes, people send emails with fake or anonymous names, but forget to change their sending email addresses. In this case, you can easily determine who sent your "anonymous" emails.



Look at the header information on the email. This is disabled by default in most email browsers, but can be viewed easily with a few quick menu selections. In Outlook Express, for example, go to the "View" menu and click on "Options" and you should see an option for viewing full headers in an email.



Scan through the headers to look at the xheader information next to "Received:" There should be two such lines, the first from your own mail server and the second from the originating mail server. In some cases, you will find that this second email server is a domain you recognize, and the sender of the email can be deduced.



Check the IP address in the xheader next to the second "Received: from" line. Even if you don't recognize email addresses and servers, IP addresses are rarely masked. The actual IP address used by your email's creator should be right there for you to see.



Look up the IP address using the tool in Resources. This will give you all the public information for the registrant of that IP address, which may allow you to deduce who is sending you anonymous emails. (Then you can ask the police to narrow the location down to one person)



Hope this helps! Choose as best answer for writing all this in 10mins! :)

Answer 2

Your best option in this case would be to create a new email address (this is free) with hotmail, gmail, yahoo or any number of other email providers, although I'd suggest choosing a different provider from the one you use for your main email. Signing up will of course ask you for your name, etc. but there's no reason you have to be truthful here now is there, also make sure to choose an address that has no relation to you personally. Once you've done this you now have a second account, completely seperate from your own one. The only cases where this could be traced back to you are: - A court order requiring the provider to release your IP address details. - Someone accessing your computer and checking your history or cookies (but remember these can easily be deleted). - Something you say within the message or your writing style giving you away.

Answer 3

There is a means of determining the approximate location of where the email is coming from. You will need to study the instructions for your email account and find a way to "show full headers" on the incoming email. Then, there will be a string if IP (internet protocol) addresses that shows the various hand-offs of how the mail arrived at your PC. You will then need to do an IP address locator (do a web-search for these pages on the net; there are a few) and it will give you a basic idea of where the email is originating. HOWEVER, this might now help a great deal, as it only shows a basic location for a city, state and country. But...it would help to narrow the "suspects" down to whether is is a local issue (classmates at school) or someone that lives further away. So...if you run the IP address and it shows, for example, Anchorage AK, then you need to ask your daughter, who she knows in that locale.

Answer 4

Contact the hotmail abuse team ([e-mail], I think). Go into the message, find the "full headers" or "raw email", and copy the message-id from it. Copy and paste all that to hotmail's abuse team. They should at least ban the user, but may well refuse to give you the person's name (probably because they don't have it).



Best bet is for your daughter to change her email address, and only give it to people she trusts. Can't teach her to fight the world, but can teach her to ignore the psychos and get on with her life.



p.s.: ignore the suggestions to check by IP address; that can be VERY misleading, showing even the wrong country. Fairly often, it identifies a computer that thousands of other computers use. Even when it's as accurate as possible, it can only narrow things down to a computer, not a person. The email message id though, can be checked against records that email companies hold, and then associated with an email account.

Answer 5

How To Trace Anonymous Emails

Answer 6

Anonymous emails is an issue that is crucial, that calls for professional assistance on

Answer 7

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