how can i tell where a email comes from [ city or country ]?

Answer 1

There's no good way to tell this, both because internet domains can be forged and because many people use an e-mail server that is located in a different place than where their computer is. Also, unlike postal or telephone codes, there is no city-level division for internet domains. Each country does have a domain (which you can find at http://ftp.ics.uci.edu/pub/websoft/wwwstat/country-codes.txt ), though not all use them. Standard domains like .com and .net are most often located in the United States.

There are some services such as http://www.ip2location.com/ that have a database of IP addresses (the number codes that identify the computer from which an e-mail originates). You can enter the IP, and it will give the location of the computer. However, even these generally identify the SERVER that sent the e-mail, not the actual location of the person who sent the e-mail.