Finding IP Addresses from Emails
Unfortunately, it is easy to create a fake email address for malicious purposes such as online harassment. Someone using a fake email address may be claiming you or your partner is cheating, blackmailing you with compromising sexual material, making threats to you and your family, and spreading lies to business partners or customers. There are so many malicious reasons why people set up fake email addresses to make someone’s life miserable. And they believe, and you may think, they are untouchable behind their fake accounts. But we will tell you how to find IP from email address.
There is no such thing as anonymity, not even on the internet.
Most harassment we see happening through email happens from Gmail addresses and Protonmail. Gmail almost always shows one of its own IP addresses in the email header. Unless the email is sent by phone or through a desktop client like Microsoft Outlook. Protonmail is encrypted. So if you want to find IP from an email address, here are two ways to do so.
What does an IP address tell you?
Someone’s IP address gives you an idea of the location of that person. Even though the IP address may point to a specific area or neighbourhood IP look-up sites, an IP address doesn’t tell you more than a generalized location. An IP address gives you basic details like the geographical location, ISP, and more.
You can use an IP address to get an idea of the city someone lives in. Because of this, many websites such as Google keep this information hidden. An IP in itself can’t be used to track down the owner of an email address. However, it can be used in conjunction with other methods to identify the email address owner.
Two ways to find IP from an email address
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Social Engineering to finding IP addresses from emails
Gmail often doesn’t disclose the IP address of users, but to be sure, follow these steps to find out if the email header reveals the IP address of the sender. Protonmail is always encrypted, so you need to get the IP address outside the actual email. One way to do this is through social engineering, which is the act of convincing the user to perform an online task that makes them vulnerable to an attack. Like scammers do. This means that you need to get the user to visit a link that will allow you to capture their IP address. If you are online harassed in a severe way, or sexually blackmailed, the antagonist won’t easily be convinced to click on a link. Our investigators however have been able to get the most careful and sophisticated antagonists to take the bait. We have a library full of pretexts, domains, and tricks.
It is important to note that you can get an incorrect IP address if the user is using a VPN, proxy, or Tor Network. In this case, it gets considerably hard to identify the owner of an email address. Not even Google or Protonmail would have the real IP address in this case. However, our investigators can often bypass proxies and VPNs.
Rexxfield developed its own proprietary cyber crime-fighting tool, with which we can identify anonymous users on the internet. In this case, we can help you find IP from your email address. All our methods are legal, compelling, and admissible in court. Once we have identified anonymous antagonists, they often remove the fake accounts and stop their harassment out of fear of criminal or civil court action. But if they persist, our work helps you seek injunctive relief through litigation. We will work together with your lawyer or law enforcement in this case.
Contact our cyber investigators
2. Subpoena the Email Service to find an IP address from email
Another, but more costly, method of finding IP addresses from emails is through a subpoena. Only lawyers and law enforcement can serve Google or Protonmail or other email services a subpoena. Through a subpoena, you can ask the email services to disclose all customer information related to the email address, such as the name, email address, phone number, IP addresses, and much more.
The email service will try to find any way not to disclose this information because of privacy violations, but through years of experience and expertise in our field, we know exactly what to ask for and how to ask for it.
We can help ghostwrite a subpoena that you can give to your lawyer to reduce legal costs. We also ghostwrite subpoenas for law enforcement to minimize their work, which makes it more likely they will take on a case.
