need an expert advise

I am new here and I need an expert advise. This is in regards to yahoo mail or any other mail. There was someone here who asked the same question, and I am reiterating it again. How can I trace if someone had an access to my email in the past. Can an IP address of the opener be used to track the person who opened my account. Or my question goes, can IP addresses be stamped on the log in record when one person access or log in to my account? How does it work? I know that I have to change my password every so often, but I need to know how I can trace back who opened my account. Is it even possible?

Only if the mail provider gives up the information.


They won't without a supeona... however it is spelled.

Hi, Thank you. But I still need clarification. Can an IP address be stamped on the log-in records?

Yes. An IP address would be in the logs.


BUT...

After you get the IP, you have to figure out how to find out who had that IP at that time... and if it was a foreign proxy.... Or even if it was a Verizon IP... what are you going to do with it?

Not only would you have to get the IP from the mail provider, you would have to make the connection from IP to individual through their ISP, assuming they weren't using a proxy and assuming the records are kept. You won't get far with either without the law involved.

But how long does yahoo mail keep their logs on? Do they refresh it every so often? Can they provide them to me easily?...

If I have to pay for tracer companies to trace back the logs for who is accessing my email, can they trace back, or can tehy only trace when I purchase their services?

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Originally posted here by joytome_4
But how long does yahoo mail keep their logs on? Do they refresh it every so often? Can they provide them to me easily?...

If I have to pay for tracer companies to trace back the logs for who is accessing my email, can they trace back, or can tehy only trace when I purchase their services?

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If you changed your password you should not have a problem............ Are you the only user on your system? I can't imagine that anything short of a keylogger would allow anyone to access you acct. after you take the basic step of editing your P-word.

As far as tracing the IP of the person responsable......highly unlikely. As e-mail accounts (in most cases) can be accessed from anywhere. And Yahoo will not really help you unless serious laws have been broken. IE: Identity theft.

Details please.

joytome_4

Your answer is the same as for the other poster. Forget it

Unless a criminal offence is involved and you can enlist the aid of law enforcement agencies you have no chance of learning anything meaningful.

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If I have to pay for tracer companies to trace back the logs for who is accessing my email, can they trace back, or can tehy only trace when I purchase their services?

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Save your money, those outfits are pure snake oil. The "logs" belong to the mail provider and involved ISPs. They don't hand them out, even if they haven't been deleted.

The metadata that might be attached to your mail account is useless..............the IP address of an AOL proxy server?................... :rolleyes:

You need a lot more information and justification to get anyone who might even remotely be able to help you interested.

Remember one thing: "if it is free, I will get the level of service that I am paying for"

:)

Thanks for the advise Nihill...
It's just that, I tried calling one of the tracer services to inquire and they told me that they can trace the source of the IP address of the one opening my email, once they put a tracker of some sort when I buy their services. In addition, they told me that they can search/trace back if they can, but it will be more expensive. The cheaper sevices are the ones that they can put a monitor for future log-ins.

In another question, is it easy to inquire from big ISP providers such as AOL, if the source is a dial-up connection? I tried tracing an IP source, on WHOIS and it gave me packets. What are they? Please let me know.

Ok... you want to know how to "track" it?


run a webserver, host an image, 1 pixel by 1 pixel. Insert that image into an email you send to yourself.


Make the email really juicy so they'll open it.


Check your webserver logs for the ip that downloaded the image.

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Ok... you want to know how to "track" it?


run a webserver, host an image, 1 pixel by 1 pixel. Insert that image into an email you send to yourself.


Make the email really juicy so they'll open it.


Check your webserver logs for the ip that downloaded the image.

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this is provide the person reading your mail has "download images" enabled or dosen't have "download images from originating server only"..enabled in their browser..

Hmmm when you craft the message better include some psuedo juicy images. ;) .so they will want to d/l them..:)

ciao

Hi joytome_4

I will try to give you a simple explanation (hi-tech peeps, please be patient :) )

Please understand that I do not have a Yahoo account, so I cannot go into the fine detail, but most mail services are similar.

When someone signs into your account it will record the date time and IP address against your account. Please be aware that this is different from the ISP and mail provider logs, which are to do with traffic across their servers (please think of your data as a sort of "account usage history", and their "logs" as an internal record of activity across their machines).

Now, the IP address that you see, is the address of the service provider that made the link that has been assigned to the person who signed on. For example this is an ADSL connection, but as I switch the machine off every night, I get a new address next time I log on to my ISP, so this changes, and I have no idea who used it before me or will use it afterwards.

So, what you see in your "account history" is the address of the person who signed on at that particular moment in time. All your snake oil merchants can do is log in every so often and check your history...............then they can tell you that a connection was made from a certain ISP at a certain time. However, my ISP has millions of addresses that they issue every day.............so you really haven't learned all that much.

To actually trace me, you would have to get the mail provider to check back the precise time of the connection to the ISP, and the ISP to check who logged into them at that time. That would work, but not if I was using a "pay as you go" dial-up service...............all they would be able to trace would be the telephone number against the obviously fake account that I had set up.

More interestingly, if I use an anonymous proxy, then they would find nothing............and I would just love to see the FBI and Secret Service try to get anything out of my provider in Hanoi :D

I hope that by now you can see that it is all rather complex, so the providers are not that interested.

AOL is an interesting case because of its somewhat unusual architecture. It intentionally uses proxy servers, so the task of tracing anything immediately gets an added layer of complexity.

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I tried tracing an IP source, on WHOIS and it gave me packets. What are they? Please let me know.

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I am not sure what you mean, could you give me the IP address so I can look for myself. Please use the private messaging (PM) system...........purple tab at the top left of this post.

:)