# Where did this email originate?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-this-email-originate/299375>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [April 14, 2005, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-this-email-originate/299375 "2005-04-14T23:16:34Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 5\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![dauerbach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c2a13f/32.png) [@dauerbach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dauerbach)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2005, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-this-email-originate/299375/1 "2005-04-14T23:16:34Z")

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Ok, I got a really weird email preportedly from an italian exchange student we hosted for a week. It was received via hotmail. I don’t know how to access the header information. Once I have that I want to try to find out if it is from locally or the city where they now are. How do I figure this out?

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**Author:** ![rfgdxm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c0e974/32.png) [@rfgdxm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rfgdxm)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2005, 11:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-this-email-originate/299375/2 "2005-04-14T23:40:23Z")

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> [@dauerbach](#):
>
> Ok, I got a really weird email preportedly from an italian exchange student we hosted for a week. It was received via hotmail. I don’t know how to access the header information. Once I have that I want to try to find out if it is from locally or the city where they now are. How do I figure this out?

How are you reading Hotmail?

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**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\
**Post date:** [April 14, 2005, 11:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-this-email-originate/299375/3 "2005-04-14T23:45:00Z")

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Hard to do with any degree of accuracy. The best you’d get is the location of their ISP’s connection to the Internet.

For example, I’m in San Francisco, but if you trace my email’s headers and locate the email gateways, they’ll either come up as in Virginia, Minnesota or Arizona - depends on which email server that they enter the Internet through.

What you can try is plugging their email address into here: [http://centralops.net/co/EmailDossier.vbs.asp](http://centralops.net/co/EmailDossier.vbs.asp)

You’ll then (hopefully!) get a page listing “MX Records” and “SMTP Session” The first line of the SMTP Session should say “Contacting someserver [IP address]” The IP address is a set of four short numbers separated by dots, like 192.168.1.103.

Copy that IP number into this page: [http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl](http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl) (ignore the error message the first time you access that page) Click “Submit Query” Hopefully again, you’ll get a record of who owns that email server and their location.

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**Author:** ![dauerbach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c2a13f/32.png) [@dauerbach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dauerbach)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2005, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-this-email-originate/299375/4 "2005-04-15T00:26:41Z")

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I am reading it in IE.

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**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\
**Post date:** [April 15, 2005, 10:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/where-did-this-email-originate/299375/5 "2005-04-15T10:35:40Z")

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Options  
Mail Display Settings  
Message Headers  
Full

Options should be at the right edge of the page, next to Help.