is hotmail tracable?

via ipaddress

[AffiliateDreamer]

Hi,

If someone emails me using a hotmail email address, is it possible for me to find out there IP address? it seems people using gmail and yahoo are traceable, but hotmail hides this info?

[Dijkgraaf]

Are you receiving these e-mails to a hotmail account?
Then go to Options, Mail Display Settings and set Message Headers to Full or Advanced.

[encyclo]

It should be possible - have a look in the email headers (source code) and you should see something similar to

X-Originating-IP

in there.

[AffiliateDreamer]

ok it turns out the ip is visible...my bad.

[Dijkgraaf]

Ok, then you need to learn to interpret the headers, as they are spoofing the hotmail address and probably not even coming from hotmail at all.
You need find the line in the header where your mailserver received the message (in the example below mx.yourmailhost.com).

Received: from probablyfakehost (host.example.com [nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn])
by mx.yourmailhost.com (Postfix) with ESMTP id zzzzzzzzz for <[e-mail]>; Tue, 15 Nov 2005 08:51:12 +HH00 (timezone)

Bolding added for emphasis.

probablyfakehost is usually spoofed
host.example.com is sometimes accurate as that is your mailserver doing a reverse lookup on the IP.
But the most accurate is for you to take nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn and do a DNS lookup on it to find out what the ISP is.