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| Emails have enabled
an efficient means of communication, without the limitations
of time zones, speed or cost, usually associated with
many of the other forms of communication. Though advantageous
in this manner, emails can easily be used for negative
purposes as well, making SPAM and virus emails a problem.
This seciton covers some basics that the everyday email
user can do to trace down an offending email sender. |
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Select one of the following topics
for more information:
--> An
IP Address
--> Email
Programs
--> Email
Logs
--> Email
Headers
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An IP Address
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| IP
addresses are an effective means used to track
down and differentiate between different computers.
Each computer's IP address is therefore, naturally unique,
composed of 32 bits
and grouped into four lots of eight bits. The IP address
is recorded every time your |
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| computer makes contact
with a server, including when you first log on with
your ISP (internet service provider)to when you access
different web pages. Different websites also have an
IP address composed of bits, but for convenience, the
long chain of numerals is instead interpretted into
an easier-to-remember word address using a domain name
service (DNS). During the trace back of an email message,
the IP address of the various protocols
used to transfer the email from one location to another
can be quite useful. |
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Email Programs
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| There are a variety
of email programs used to manage, store and compose
emails. Email programs such as Outlook and Eudora specialise
in encoding and decoding received email messages, to
make them understandable, not unlike the encryption
and decryption process described in the next section,
but slightly simpler. All of the encoding is mapped
to an email standard, a form of coding which holds information
for the posting of messages from place to place. Some
common email standards are MIME (multipurpose internet
mail extensions) and uuencode, of which the latter is
more often used in attempts to hide information in a
message, but can be easily decoded by various decoding
utilities that come with major operating systems. |
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Email Logs
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| Email logs are generally
kept on all email servers, being a record of the emails
which were sent, received, the email addresses involved
and the time/date of posting/receipt. However, it may
be a problem if some servers
use what is known as circular logging, where a certain
amount of data space is allocated for the storage of
log files, but once this space is full, the beginning
(earliest of the log files) is overwritten and this
overwritten data is deleted for good. The log files
are commonly formatted into just plain text and their
main use is for identifying the source of the offending
email/s. Different email servers have different forms
of email logs, but the information these files provide
are the same. |
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Email Headers
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Email
headers prove information not unlike that of an
email log, but details the path the email took
in terms of which protocols were used to transfer
the messages and thus work backwards. The return
path of the email, the email address to which
your email program will send a reply, is often
not the source of the message when an offender
deliberately tries to disguise his/her tracks.
Each email also has a unique message ID, which
may correspond to data contained in a message
log.This information is not normally |
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screen above is an example 'message source' of
the welcome message Microsoft Outlook sends. |
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by default, but is easily accessible in most email
programs. For example, Microsoft Outlook displays
this information when the property of an email
is displayed and 'view source' is chosen. |
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