Doghouse Reilly
Adrift on an uncharted sea
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2003
- Messages
- 3,418
Is there any way for someone to tell where I'm located geographically through an email I send them?
Email Question
- Thread starter Doghouse Reilly
- Start date
Wudang
BOFH
They'll know who your ISP is maybe which might give them some geographic clues but not really.
Doghouse Reilly
Adrift on an uncharted sea
- Joined
- Apr 28, 2003
- Messages
- 3,418
Is this true even for free email providers like gmail or hotmail, etc? How would one learn one's ISP through these emails?
evildave
Unregistered
E
From just the email message its self, every field within it can be counterfeited, and bounced off an open relay that doesn't log. This is what spammers tend to do.
There are databases available that will work out what city/state you're in by IP address, but that's as far as it goes with an IP (assuming it was logged).
With a federal search warrant, they could get your IP (assuming it was logged when you sent the email), then go to the ISP that owns that block of IPs and ask for their log of who was logged in and using the IP at that time. Then see who owns that account.
There are services such as this that can obfuscate your path, but they'll comply if issued a warrant as well. You would need to make sure the anonymizer was for an international site, and not run by spooks.
http://www.the-cloak.com
You can go to a coffee house with 'wireless', or with dedicated browsers, or to a public library with internet access and pay cash to log in and send.
You can make sure and leave a wireless hub turned on all the time and open, so at least there's a question of who was on-line at the time. "Coulda been anyone within 100 yards of my home..."
Theoretically, a technological method is available if your victim uses Outlook or Internet Explorer: Exploit one of its many known security weaknesses to install a worm that uploads all of your address book contacts, and any likely things in your 'My Documents' folder (such as old tax filings) over a week or so.
There are databases available that will work out what city/state you're in by IP address, but that's as far as it goes with an IP (assuming it was logged).
With a federal search warrant, they could get your IP (assuming it was logged when you sent the email), then go to the ISP that owns that block of IPs and ask for their log of who was logged in and using the IP at that time. Then see who owns that account.
There are services such as this that can obfuscate your path, but they'll comply if issued a warrant as well. You would need to make sure the anonymizer was for an international site, and not run by spooks.
http://www.the-cloak.com
You can go to a coffee house with 'wireless', or with dedicated browsers, or to a public library with internet access and pay cash to log in and send.
You can make sure and leave a wireless hub turned on all the time and open, so at least there's a question of who was on-line at the time. "Coulda been anyone within 100 yards of my home..."
Theoretically, a technological method is available if your victim uses Outlook or Internet Explorer: Exploit one of its many known security weaknesses to install a worm that uploads all of your address book contacts, and any likely things in your 'My Documents' folder (such as old tax filings) over a week or so.