# Can a yahoo or Google email be traced?



## papereater (Sep 16, 2016)

People,

Im getting emails from people who are selling me stuff, and are shifty about where they really are from. Can one trace an email from those email sources? Tried googling it but confused. Isnt an email hard to trace/track down? If easy to trace we are not so private, are we??

Thanks, people.


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## jmon (Nov 5, 2012)

FBI, government agencies, and US cyber security have the tools to track someone down, but the rest of us do not, way to sophisticated to explain. Especially if someone is using a VPN, which a lot of people do these days. Especially the hackers/scammers for obvious reasons. They can mask their location and identity to look like they are anywhere in the world.

There are a lot of free VPN's out there, but there is a monthly/yearly fee for the really good ones that can mask your location/identity and make you untraceable. Depending on the VPN, some can be very pricey$$$.


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## Carpet (Jan 1, 2018)

You cannot track down an email address to know where someone actually is unless it's been posted somewhere, but even then the person who posted it could have fat-fingered it. Google and Yahoo are able to determine the IP address the person used when they accessed their email. If they sound shifty, don't communicate.


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## Domo (Nov 9, 2018)

Yes, everything anyone has ever saved, recorded, posted, saved on local drive, etc. can be traced/found/exploited.

If you have the tools and patience you can find anything you've received.

If you think you might be ashamed of it in the future - then don't do it.

I'm always so surprised when "famous" people are shocked that their **** ends up on the Internet for all to see.

Nothing is forever, except electrons...


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## joed (Mar 13, 2005)

you can track an email to the IP it was sent from. Problem is it can be hidden by a VPN to look like it came from somewhere else.


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## Scottg (Nov 5, 2012)

Look at whatever email software you have and see if there's a way for you to look at message headers. While an inbound email might be a spoof/fake from anywhere, lazy spammers might not care and just leave the basic default information in there. So if you can get to that part of your software, you should be able to at least get close to the origination point.


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## huesmann (Aug 18, 2011)

They're probably spoofed.


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## Drachenfire (Jun 6, 2017)

papereater said:


> People,
> 
> Im getting emails from people who are selling me stuff, and are shifty about where they really are from. Can one trace an email from those email sources? Tried googling it but confused. Isnt an email hard to trace/track down? If easy to trace we are not so private, are we??
> 
> Thanks, people.


It is called spam and the time you spend trying to track one email, you will likely receive ten+ more. DO NOT open the emails, instead use the spam filter in your email client.

Spam is a scourge we are unlikely to eliminate anytime soon.


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## papereater (Sep 16, 2016)

Wow, I didnt know. Thanks for all the good info. I see from above, at least how I understand it, some here say no way they can trace you (anyone) then others seem to say yes, they can. Even without the FBI, right? 

I do have a spam filter, but geez, so many get through. So, whats a VPN?


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## papereater (Sep 16, 2016)

joed said:


> you can track an email to the IP it was sent from. Problem is it can be hidden by a VPN to look like it came from somewhere else.


Lets say one can find a IP. What will it show? The person's home address? Town? User name on the account? I once looked for my own IP, and all I got were a series of numbers with periods separating them.


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## joed (Mar 13, 2005)

You can do a search on the ip address and it will give you the company and town of the provider. That can also be deceptive. My current IP traces to Montreal. I am not within 500 miles of Montreal.


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## Drachenfire (Jun 6, 2017)

papereater said:


> So, whats a VPN?


VPN is an acronym for Virtual Private Network. VPN creates an encrypted tunnel between you and a remote server operated by a VPN service. All your internet traffic is routed through this tunnel, so your data is secure from prying eyes along the way. Because your traffic is exiting the VPN server, your true IP address is hidden, masking your identity and location.

There are free versions of VPNs. But the free versions may have limitations such as how much data you can use.

There are many VPN pay services available. Both McAfee and Norton offer it as a stand-alone service or as part of their security/anti-virus suite.


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## Old Thomas (Nov 28, 2019)

Yes almost anything can be traced. Not everyone has that capability available. As evidence, if someone were stupid enough to email a threat to a high government official, it is a good bet that it can be traced and the person will be found.


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## CaptTom (Dec 31, 2017)

papereater said:


> ...some here say no way they can trace you (anyone) then others seem to say yes, they can. Even without the FBI, right?


Say, for example, you get a message from a Google GMail account. The header will show the path to you from the GMail server. But it won't show you where that Google account signed on. Obviously Google knows, and might tell you if you serve them with a subpoena. And anyone who is spying on the interenet connections between the sender and the Google server (like, a government) could possibly figure it out.

So everyone is correct. It's theoretically possible to trace an email, but almost impossible for _you_ to do so.



papereater said:


> I do have a spam filter, but geez, so many get through.


And you probably get a lot of junk among your snail-mail, too. So what? Toss it and move on.

Assuming you have a halfway decent e-mail client, you should be able to "train" your spam filter by marking messages as spam. This should increase the number which are filtered out. Making sure your e-mail address is never put on any public web site also goes a long way, but once it's out there, it's very hard to take back. If you have "friends" who click on those "send this to a friend" links, they've got you.

Probably your best defense is to use an e-mail service with robust spam filtering of its own, like GMail. Because they see all the e-mails going across their system, they can tell what's spam better than your own computer's or phone's spam filtering algorithm, which only sees the ones addressed to you.


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## Elmer-Dallas Texas (9 mo ago)

Why would you even think about buying something from an email sent to you? Buy from a source you choose. 
Responding to any email that you did not initiate will cause you pain and anguish imo.


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## CaptTom (Dec 31, 2017)

Elmer-Dallas Texas said:


> Why would you even think about buying something from an email sent to you?


Excellent point. I don't really blame the spammers. I blame the idiots who buy their products and services. They wouldn't send it if it didn't work. Same for those annoying pop-up, flashing, talking ads on web pages. Obviously someone must see those and actually click on them. Why would you do that???

Advertising in general is for the gullible.


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