tracing access to email account

Two companies on the Internet claim they can trace for anyone accessing your email. They claim they search the IP address of the owner's email account and then trace to see which IP addresses are actually accessing the email. They claim they can do this even with webmail accounts like Yahoo and Hotmail. How is this possible? Wouldn't Yahoo or Hotmail have to give these companies access to this information? If they can do this without assistance from Yahoo or Hotmail, how are they doing it? Would the person accessing the account have to actually open an email? If that's the case then there are free services that will trace this for me. Do you have to link to the investigating company's server for a trace like this to work?

They charge a lot of money for the service, but will not answer these questions I've posed to you. Since they refuse to tell me how this type of trace works without first getting my credit card number I decided to bring it here to the experts. I hope you can shed some light on exactly how they're doing this type of trace.

Where are the links to these two companies you are talking about?????

www.triadinvestigationsagency.com

and

www.abika.com

Both companies claim they provide this service.

Sounds to me like they are just looking for easy marks and fast money. Tracing the IP doesn't actually prove anything. You can access your email from home, and the IP that would register may be the proxy from your ISP. If you hit it from internet cafes or your local college campus, you may get any number of dynamically assigned IPs. Doesn't mean anything. It would only be significant if it showed IP numbers originating in places you couldn't possibly have been.

Sounds like a get rich quick scheme to me. 'Course, they probably need your email address, Account ID and password to do all this, as well as your credit card number.

;)

...sounds like BS. It reminds me of those netdetective outfits that claim they can find and get anything on anybody (yeah, right). You'd be better off saving money and learning to read email headers.

Good advice...how would they trace IP's without permission from the ISP? Are they using some program to do this? Is this something I could do myself?

Again, learn how to read email headers and running whois's on ip addresses. I tracked my bro through Europe on a Congressional junket once, sometimes even determining the hotel where he was staying. Check out dnsstuff.com for whois lookups. Or try Sam Spade if you're running Windows. Email headers are revealing in many ways, even giving away a user's OS.

Sounds like you'd be better off asking the mail hosting service if
they are willing to inform you if the account has been accessed
from anywhere other than your home IP.

When in doubt about the security of a web mail account, close it and
start a new one. They are free.
:cool:

one of the Internet companies just replied to an email I sent with this:

"This search determines if someone other than yourself is accessing your email account. We will need to know what your IP address is or the ranges of your IP address (depending on if dynamic or static; if it changes or stays the same)) in order to conduct the search. All it will return is the IP address of the user. It does not produce the name of the user but does provide the name of the Internet Provider Service (IPS), address, city, state and contact info. We hope this answers your question."

It actually does NOT answer my question. I am still in the dark as to exactly how this is done and emailed them back to say this. I just don't see paying over $100 just to know an Internet providers contact information. And besides, what if the access my account using an anonymous proxy? Where does that get me? How are they determining access without permission?

Well, they are trading on the ignorance of the larger population. I can provide much the same level of service using free online tools. I'd need permission from you to access information from your ISP, but other than that, it's pretty simple. But, since the customer has to provide most of the information, it seems a bit pricey to require someone to pay you $100 up front to do this "investigation."

And, they can't provide anything more than the "whois" information from the source IP that is suspect--which anyone can get given the IP.

So, as mentioned earlier by our friend rcgreen, talk to your ISP and get the IP numbers accessing your account and do the whois yourself. SamSpade is your friend.

If it is just "whois" then it is can be by passed by tools like this:
http://tor.eff.org/cvs/tor/doc/tor-doc-win32.html

then thay have almost no chanse to trace.
thay will reserve wrong IP if computer configuration is correct

Of course some one that uses lists of proxies such as:
http://www.samair.ru/proxy/
could throw them off as well.

If they are not charging at least $1,000,000 it is:

SPAM SCAM SPAM SCAM SPAM SCAM........................

You would need to use serious bribery to get there,

OK, so you are a super nerd who has just discovered e-mail headers and metadata?...........so let's rip off those lower down in the food chain?.......................

A final word of advice:

"If it is less than $10,000 and it is advertised, it is a RIP-OFF ".............. now go stand in front of a mirror and repeat that ten times :D

as the saying goes: "There is one born every minute"

;)

There are email tracking technologies out there. Even if proxies or webmail services are used, it will report back the IP of machine (I'm assuming just the public IP) that opened/viewed the email etc ..
There are a couple different techniques that are used to accomplish this...some I am familiar with and some I am not. Of the ones I am mildly familiar with, I know they include HTML scripts or they embed tags within the email that pull images from a website. When the image is loaded from the website, the website in turn records the IP pulling the image.
Example, you want to track where Person A is.
-You host a webserver. You put an image on it that is only 1 pixel by 1 pixel and you name the file "blah blah blah.jpg"
-You craft an email and send it to your target and embed a link that pulls that 1 pixel by 1 pixel graphic image from your webserver.
-Your webserver records the IP of the machine making the call.

Spammers have used similar techniques. Of course, there are way around this specific technique, such as disabling HTML. Even then, there are other techniques. Just ran a search on google (email + silent tracking) and found a site that provides some interesting services:
ReadNotify will endeavour to provide the following in your tracking reports:

* Date and time opened
* Location of recipient (per their ISP city /town)
* Map of location (available on paid subscriptions)
* Recipients IP address
* Apparent email address of opening (if available)
* Referrer details (ie; if accessed via web mail etc)
* URL clicks
* How long the email was read for
* How many times your email was opened
* If your email was forwarded, or opened on a different computer

Link to site: http://www.readnotify.com/readnotify/about.asp

Yes, Eyecre8, the techniques and tools described are available and often used by spammers--and script kiddies for worms, viruses and trojans--as well. Problem is, some states now have laws against this type of methodology. An investigator who uses that, depending on the location of the target, may be come the target of a state Attorney General.