When i receive some emails some say "ip may be forged", what does this mean?

Question

When i look at some of my yahoo emails i receive with full headers,,this is by some of the ip addresses, [ip may be forged] what does that mean?

Answer 1

A lot of phishing scams use IP addresses in a link because they're not human readable.

You cannot tell if an IP address in a link is for PayPal.com or for TakeMyMoney.com. Therefore, IP addresses in URLs are generally considered unsafe, and are tagged as such.

You should avoid clicking on links that contain IP addresses instead of domain names. Sometimes these links are disguised, but many modern email clients can detect them.

Safe:
http://www.paypal.com

Unsafe:
http://123.45.67.89

Answer 2

It means that a forward lookup failed or gave a different IP address (The domain of the email ie the bit after the @ symbol has a different IP to the one shown). This could mean the email is fake or the email senders mail server is not configured correctly (highly unlikely for big name email providers such as yahoo and hotmail).

Answer 3

Hi. It means that the originating IP address may have been modified to mask the ID of the sender. Not a good sign of a trustworthy source.