How to Trace an Email Back to its Source IP Address

You can find out the source of a phishing scam or other malicious content by looking up the IP address of the sender.

Dec 23, 2022

Last Updated On: Dec 23, 2022

4 min read

How to Trace an Email Back to its Source IP Address

If you receive an email from an unrecognisable address, you can find out the location where it may have originated with just a few simple steps. All you need to do is find the IP address of the sender and trace its location online. While it may sound complicated, the process is pretty simple and straightforward. In this article, we show you how to trace an email back to its source IP address.

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Table of Contents

Here’s how you can trace an email to its source IP Address

You can find the IP address of the sender from the email header. Here’s how.

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Step 1: Open your Gmail inbox and select the email you want to trace.

Step 2: Click on the ellipses (three dots) and select ‘Show original’.

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Step 2: Click on the ellipses (three dots) and select ‘Show original’.

This will open the full email header in a new tab.

Yahoo mail users can view the full email header by opening the mail and selecting ‘View raw message’ after clicking on the ellipses. Outlook users can click on ‘More actions’ and select ‘View message source’ to open the email header.

Any email you receive travels through various servers. For every server that the email travels through, the header adds a ‘Received’ line and records the IP address of the server. To find the IP address of the sender, look for the first ‘Received’ line. The IP address will be listed there.

Step 2: Click on the ellipses (three dots) and select ‘Show original’.

How to find the location of the email sender using the IP address

Once you know the IP address of the sender, you can trace their location using these easy steps.

Step 1: Copy the full email header.

Step 2: Go to https://tools.iplocation.net/trace-email.

Step 3: Scroll down and paste the email header in the text box.

Step 3: Scroll down and paste the email header in the text box. How to Trace an Email Back to its Source IP Address

Step 4: Hit ‘Submit’.

Step 4: Hit ‘Submit’. How to Trace an Email Back to its Source IP Address

The website will display the name of the country and the general region where the email may have originated.

Conclusion

This is how you can trace any email back to its source IP address. Instead of iplocation.net, you can use several other online IP location tools like DNS checker and KeyCDN. All you need to do is locate the IP address from the email header and paste it into the appropriate box on the IP locator website. You do not have to copy the full email header in this scenario. If you found this article to be helpful, let us know in the comments!

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