Locating an IP address

[High1]

Hello

I know its possible to locate the IP address of your mail server - mine is in Seattle though I am thousands of miles away - but how is it possible to determine the IP address of the person who actually sends you an email?

I know in police dramas, they can locate the IP address of a person who, for instance, sends an email from an Internet café, so I know that, technically, it can be done - I just don't know how. I don't particularly want to do it - and have no need to do it - but would like to know how it is done.

Many thanks.

[DaveLembke]

Header info to e-mail has info, as well as logs are created to keep track of what IP's you can connected from. The logs are usually generated as a way to protect your account from an attacker such as if someone in China trys to logon as you to get into your e-mail the IP would be outside the normal operating pattern that you have established with the email provider so they might block it and notify you that someone tried to access your e-mail and to change your password immediately as a way to avoid being hacked. Even computerhope here keeps record of your IP that you connected with. Lots of sites do it!

[camerongray]

It's not as easy as in the movies!

The email header will contain the IP address of the machine that sent the email, depending on the sender's email setup this could either be their IP address or the IP address of their mailserver (e.g. Gmail).  If it is the latter, the IP address of the sender could usually be acquired by contacting the email provider who would have it on record somewhere (this would obviously require some sort of warrant).

With the sender's IP address you can get their location down to the city but this is not always correct.  To get an accurate street address you would need to contact the ISP corresponding to the IP address who can look up the address on the customer's account.  This would obviously also require a warrant.  There is no way to simply get an exact address from every IP address without contacting ISPs or having access to their records.