Can People I Email See My IP Address??

[c0419]

I recently found out that people can look up your IP address through your email which I'm not comfortable with. So from now on I've decided to send emails through my phone only using Sprint's network instead of wifi. I'm wondering if people will still be able to look up any information on my location, even if it's vague.

Also I've heard of using proxy servers and VPN networks. Will these really work? And do I need to use them constantly or only when I'm sending the email?

 

[napster100]

As far as I know it is possible to get the IP address from an email header. Though trying to geo-locate someone through their public IP can be anywhere within a 1Km radius of where the website says its location is which is close but think of how many other homes that will be in that radius. Also if your sending emails to family, friends and work mates, what's to worry about? Its only them that's receiving the email Further more yes proxies and VPNs do work as when an email is sent through those connections its prefixed with the services public IP instead of yours, though through my expirence of proxies, it doesn't really give a valid geo-location so you may have trouble signing into some websites like Facebook.

At the end of the day, if your sending emails to suspious people, ask your self why? Only email people you know, and can trust. That's the only way you can be safe

 

[c0419]

Thanks for your help. One more question, If I'm sending emails from 2 different email accounts and don't wait them to be identified as the same, how would I go about doing that using a VPN (free or paid)? Would a random IP be assigned to me every time I log in or however it works?

 

[napster100]

I know of two ways of using VPN, one being through remote desktop and another via settings you can enter on your device which changes how you connect to the internet, it will go through your ISPs servers and then to the VPN host the out to its destination.

Whether your external IP will be the same or not every time you connect will be up to the VPN host, but usually you'll have the same IP for the length of one connection at least, then when you disconnect after 30 secs it may change depending on if there settings have set a static IP or dynamic IP, static means it will never change and dynamic means it will but the the frequency isn't always the same but it can be, again its dependent on the hosts settings.

If you was accessing two different email accounts and send mail from them on the same device, the likely hood of them being prefixed with the same IP is quite high, unless the VPN host has set dynamic IPs and yours has changed since you sent the last email, which is very slim nd your device needs to be disconnected for at least 30 secs defaultly, however it can take longer. And by disconnected in all the paragraphs I litterly mean thedevice is not connected to the VPN in anyway, even if your device is connected but your not doing anything on it, its still sending data and reviving it, ie telling a server to keep a.connection open.

 

[c0419]

What if I use 2 separate VPN's? One for one email account and a different for the other, so if it doesn't change every time, they will at least be separate. Would that work?

 

[Someone Somewhere]

You can only see the IP if the email was sent through a local client (e.g. Thunderbird, Outlook). If you use webmail, it shows up as your email provider's server's address.

 

[c0419]

So if I'm using Gmail I don't need to worry because neither account can be traced?

 

[Someone Somewhere]

If you're going to gmail.com and sending it from there. If you're using IMAP/POP3 then you do need to worry.

Of course, Google knows where you're sending it from (but they did anyway).