Track IP Address
IP addresses are assigned to network connected devices to enable communication between the devices. They are the virtual addresses that help one device to recognize another device; they also help the human beings to identify the source of a piece of information. For example, if you know the IP address of an anonymous email, you can find out the origin of the mail and eventually trace the sender also. Similarly, whenever you visit an internet site, your IP address will trace back to your system. Tracking IP addresses is made possible through various tools, either free or with a fee, that utilize the WHOIS system which uses a database query service to get the registration information of an IP address. With these online tools, you can trace an IP address to a physical address; the geographical location of the device and the person who owns the device or a domain. This process is called geolocation.
In order to track an IP address, you must first obtain the IP address of the website or email sender. The IP address is usually located in email headers in the case of emails. Most of the email clients provide options to display the headers if they are not visible in the email. The header will have several rows of data; search for the one that starts with ‘Received: from.’; it will have the email address and IP address of the sender. If there are multiple ‘Received: from.’ lines, the last ‘Received: from.’ is the person who has sent the mail. In the case of websites, the IP addresses are not so easily available. You can go to any online website IP lookup tool and enter the URL of the website and get the corresponding IP address. Or you can get it by another method; run the Command Prompt in your computer and enter the command ‘ping websitename’; for example, ping yahoo.com. This will yield the IP address of the website mentioned in the command.
Once you have acquired the IP address, open any IP address tracking website. Each website has its own method and they will tell you how to track the IP address. Enter the IP address in the prescribed field and start the search. The IP address lookup tool will retrieve the results from its database. Though the IP address lookup is expected to give all the registration details, most of the times, the details of the actual person who sent the email will not be displayed; but it will have the Internet Service Provider’s contact details from which you can track down the sender.