So you thought sending emails from Hotmail protected your privacy? Not at all..
(These are
Windows-specific instructions, but there are equivalent tools on other systems)
- Download and install NeoTrace
- Open the message you were sent, and look at the headers. In Outlook this is done by opening the mail, and going to the View | Options menu. Other mail readers have other methods.
- See the line that says X-Originating-IP? The number after that (in square brackets) is the IP Address of the machine that was used to send the message to Hotmail.
- Type the address into NeoTrace, or if you're more techy you could perform a Reverse DNS and a WhoIs lookup manually.
Simple, eh? See also
How to find out where a Napster user lives for a little more information.
By the way, I'd like to make a point about privacy; You may think that it's a little ethically dubious of me to node this information, but I can assure you that it is widely known in hacker circles. You have the right to know this too.