Track that person sending you scam email.

The average person receives about 200 emails a day. Most of these emails are legitimate, some from family, some from friends and some are business emails. But a lot of emails received are bogus and fraudulent re-directing you to a website, unfortunately people have been victims of these fraudsters and lost their money and information to these fraudsters.


The steps below will guide you not to be a victim of email scams and if you had been a victim, to now know how not to fall for it again.

Open the email using your Internet browser. If there are suspicious attachments, do not open them. You can find the information you need without opening image or document attachments.

Find the email header. The header contains information about the routing of the email and the IP address. Most email hide the header information because they see it as non-essential information. If you know how to open the header, you can still find this data.

On Gmail, click on the drop down menu next to the word "Reply" in the upper right hand corner of your message. Select "Show Original." A window with the IP information will pop up.

On YahooMail, right click on "control" and click when you are on the message. Choose "View Full Headers."

Identify the IP address in the information you have just uncovered. Following any of these methods for your chosen email carrier, you will have a window that pops up with a lot of code information. You will not need all of this information.

If the window is too small to effectively pick out the IP address, copy the information and paste it into a word processing document.

Look for the words "X-Originating-IP." This is the easiest way to spot the IP address; however, it may not be listed in those terms on all email programs. If you cannot find this term look for the word "Received" and follow the line until you see a numerical address.

Use the "Find" function on your computer to easily spot these terms. Click "Command" and the letter "F" on Mac OS. On your website browser click the "Edit" menu. Select "Find on this Page," then type the word into the box that appears and click "Enter."

Copy the IP address. An IP address is a series of numbers with a period/full stop between the numbers. An example is: 68.20.90.31.

Do an Internet search for an IP address locating website. There are many to choose from and most of them are free. You can also search for the name of the sender on social media.

Paste the IP address into the box provided by the IP address search engine. Press "Enter."

View the information that is provided to you. Most results will show the originating state or city of the IP address and possibly the computer name that the IP address is associated with.