Do you need to trace an email address to locate the email address or identify the sender? You can still accomplish this even if the email account is now closed and no longer active. It may be a bit more difficult but it is still possible to identify the person behind that email address. In this article, we will attempt to deal with the additional email address problems an investigator faces when he is trying to investigate an old or state email address that has been deactivated.
First what we need to do is find out if the email address we are attempting to investigate is still active or has been closed. If the email address we are investigating was opened for the sole purpose of contacting our client and then closed immediately after sending an email then it's going to be difficult to trace. But if the account has an email address been used for years but only recently deleted after sending the offending communication it may be a very simple investigation. In fact, the email address may be found in an instant database service.d In order to determine if the email is active you need to test it out using one of the many online services that will tell you if the email is active. You can also email the account from an email address a fake email account and see if it bounces. Of course, there are many more technical methods you can use but in this article, we are dealing with the basics.
If we have determined the email is inactive this cuts our investigation techniques in half. Because we can only analyze incoming data from the email. In an ideal investigation, we will be investigating the sender's computer by analyzing the information we can capture when they open a pretext email we sent to them. So we will have to email address analyze the incoming headers and extract the IP address, use geo-tracking, IP Address locating, and good old Whois to identify the ISP of the sender. We can also investigate the IP address to see if it is associated with any other online activity. But email address besides the IP information, we may be able to tell the senders email program such as outlook email address express.