Email Headers and Site of the Week

Site of the Week It's called Exploratorium

Reading Email Headers
Windows All Versions - Outlook Express or Windows Mail (on Vista)

Sometimes, when you receive a mysterious email, you'd really like to know what's in it, who it really came from, and more information about it. In this tutorial, we're going to show you how:) Using this method, you'll be able to safely read the entire headers (to find out who really sent the email to you) and also read the entire email text, all without opening the email itself. It's pretty cool stuff. After this tip, you'll be an email sleuth in no time at all!

(Windows Vista users - substitute Windows Mail for Outlook Express below. The steps are the same in Windows Mail as they are in Outlook Express)

1. Open your Outlook Express e-Mail Program and then click on the email message for which you want to check the headers; it will highlight in blue. Now right mouse click on it.

When you see the dropdown menu appear, click "Properties"

Now you will see the "source code" of the email. The sample below is one that we received and it appears to have come from "us" when in fact it did not. This is one of the "tricks" viruses and worms do to confuse people. It makes itself appear to come from a random address in the infected users address book. In this case, our address was in an infected person's address book and it actually sent a copy to us! Don't worry; you cannot get infected by viewing the source code of a mail!

Now to see where this really came from, you will have to look closer at all the text that you see in this window. The window does not resize, so go ahead and click the "Message Source" Button to see the text in fuller view