|
|
|
Email Crimes
|
| 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. |
|
Select one of the following topics for more information:
--> An IP
Address
--> Email
Programs
--> Email
Logs
--> Email
Headers
|
|
An IP Address
|
|
| 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 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. |
| |
|
Email Programs
|
|
| 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. |
| |
|
Email Logs
|
|
| 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.
|
| |
|
Email Headers
|
|
 |
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
shown 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.
|
| The screen to
the left is an example 'message source' of the welcome message
Microsoft Outlook sends. |
|
|
|
