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How to find the IP address of the email sender in Gmail

How to find the IP address of the email sender in Gmail

How to find the IP address of the email sender in Gmail

How to find the IP address of the email sender in Gmail, Yahoo mail, Hotmail, AOL, Outlook Express, etc.

When you receive an email, you receive more than just the message. The email comes with headers that carry important information that can tell where the email was sent from and possibly who sent it. For that, you would need to find the IP address of the sender. The tutorial below can help you find the IP address of the sender.

How to find the IP address of the email sender in Gmail

Note that this will not work if the sender uses anonymous proxy servers.

Also, note that if you receive an email sent from a Gmail account through the web browser, you may not be able to find the real IP address because Google hides the real IP address of the sender. However, if someone sends you a mail from his/her Gmail account using a client like Thunderbird, Outlook or Apple Mail, you can find the originating IP address.

Finding IP address in Gmail

  • Log into your Gmail account with your username and password.
  • Open the mail.
  • To display the email headers,
    • Click on the inverted triangle beside Reply. Select Show Orginal.
  • Look for Received: from followed by the IP address between square brackets [ ].

    Received: from [69.138.30.1] by web31804.mail.mud.yahoo.com

  • If you find more than one Received: from patterns, select the last one.
  • Track the IP address of the sender

Finding IP address in Yahoo! Mail

  • Log into your Yahoo! mail with your username and password.
  • Click on Inbox or whichever folder you have stored your mail.
  • Click on the email you want to track. When it opens, click on More. You’ll get a dropdown menu.
  • Select View Full Header.
  • Look for Received: from followed by the IP address between square brackets [ ]. That should most likely be the IP address of the sender. If there are many instances of Received: from with the IP address, select the IP address in the last pattern. If there are no instances of Received: from with the IP address, select the first IP address in X-Originating-IP.
  • In this case, the IP address of the scammer is 202.171.22.107.
  • Track the IP address of the sender

Finding IP address in Hotmail

How to find the IP address of the email sender in Gmail

Hotmail has been integrated with Windows Live, or vice-versa. And the format has changed. Here is how you find the IP address of the sender.


  • Log into your Hotmail/Windows Live account with your username and password.
  • Click on the Inbox link on the left.
  • Under the column that says “Sort by”, find the email that you want to track and right-click on it. You should get a menu that has something like Mark as read, Mark as unread, and so on. The last option in the menu should be View message source. Select it.
  • You should see the email headers now.
  • If you find a header with X-Originating-IP: followed by an IP address, that is the sender’s IP address
  • If that doesn’t work, look for Received: from followed by IP address within square brackets[].
    • If you have multiple Received: from headers, eliminate the ones that have proxy.anyknownserver.com.
  • Track the IP address of the sender

Finding IP address in AOL

  • Log into your AOL Mail AIM account with your username and password.
  • Open the email that you want to track.
  • On the top row, click on Action and in the drop-down menu, select View Message Source
  • It opens a new page with the headers. Once you have the headers, look for the IP address that follows X-AOL-IP:. That should be the IP address of the sender.
  • Track that IP address of the sender

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