How do I track an email sent by someone?

Answer 1

In some e-mail software (web-based or downloaded to your third-party software, such as Outlook or Eudora), there is something like a "view source" or "view all headers" link or button. If you click it, you'll eventually see lots of strange headers in place of the "Subject", "To", "From", and "Date" headers that originally appeared in the message (click on the first link, below, to see an example with descriptions).

A few of those headers detail the alleged source of the e-mail. However, they are difficult to read by the uninitiated, and spams are sometimes impossible to trace, assuming that's what you're really after (just to give you an idea: somebody can send you an e-mail that would appear to come from a renowned world leader; yet, even if you were to look at the extra headers, you would not see anything that would indicate it was phony).

To restore the e-mail to its original state (i.e., fewer headers and greater legibility), just click the "view fewer headers" link or button, which should have taken the place of the link/button mentioned in the first paragraph.

Entire companies devote resources to finding the source of spams (again, assuming that's what you're interested in finding), often without success, so, don't waste your time!

Answer 2

You can review the header of the message usually found under the "properties". In the header you will find the list of machine names or IP addresses that handled the message.

You can search for "reverse dns" if you want to convert the IP address to machine names.