Last updated: January 27, 2023
When you receive an email, the message is not the only information sent by the sender. Indeed the email is also composed of a header or a header which contains important data including the geographical origin of the email (through the IP address) and potentially the person who sent it.
To locate an email address, you just have to identify the IP address hidden in the email encoding.
Here I explain to you how to find the sender's IP address using major email address providers.
Find the location of the sender using Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail
Before going into details, it is important to note that the IP address is generally located in the header or header surrounded by square brackets, for example: [128.130.1.1].
Without further ado, here are the steps to follow to locate an email address:
- Log into your Gmail account with your username and password.
- Open email
- To display the header, click on the inverted triangle (or down arrow) next to Reply. Select Show original
- A page will open with some code in it. All you have to do is analyze this code in order to locate the geographical location linked to it.
- Don't worry, you don't have to be a computer genius to complete this task. You just need to use one of the many applications that can be found on the web. I suggest you use https://www.whatismyip.com/email-header-analyzer/ which will analyze the header, extract the IP and finally locate the IP.
- Copy and paste the code and click on "Analyze"to find the IP address and the location of the sender.
- And there you have it, in a few seconds you get the IP address and the geographical location of the sender of the email.
Note that you have to follow the same procedure to locate an email with Yahoo or Hotmail.
Use Facebook to locate the sender of an email
Today, thousands of people around the world are registered on Facebook. So, I think the person who emailed you has a good chance of being on Facebook.
To locate an email from Facebook, nothing's easier:
- Copy the sender's email address and sign in to your Facebook account.
- Now paste the address into your Facebook search bar.
If a person exists on Facebook with the same email address, Facebook shows their profile in the search result. You can then get thelocation of a person by consulting his profile.