| E-mails are anonymous by nature - but contains
significant information in its header about the path it traversed
before reaching your mailbox. The header is normally not visible.
We have discussed how to view and analyze header of any e-mail and
locate actual sender with his/her IP address. In this issue - we
shall discuss how to locate sender's country from IP address.
Internet Resources for IP Analysis
There are various free and paid-for Internet resources
to help you find information about IP addresses, domain names etc.
1. VisualWare
Perhaps the leader in IP tracking software, Visualware
has number of products to track e-mail, IP, domain name owner etc.
VisualRoute and eMailTrackerPro are two software from Visualroute
that can help you significant information on e-mails.
VisualRoute has a free service to demonstrate how the software works.
If your IP tracking requirement is modest - you may use this free
service to track any IP address. However, if you wish to use this
facility regularly - please consider buying the software.
To use the free service - please visit Visualware web-site
http://www.visualware.com/index.html
Click on 'Online demos' button on above page - you will reach
http://www.visualware.com/demo/index.html
Click on 'VisualRoute' link on above page and you will reach IP
Tracking area -
http://visualroute.visualware.com/
There is a simple one-step registration process that requires your
e-mail address only. Enter your e-mail address in registration box
- an identification number (called PIN) will be sent to your e-mail.
Use this PIN for first time - you will not require it again.
After registration - copy and paste any IP number and it will immediately
show the country of origin of the IP number on world map.
2. DNS Stuff
My favourite - this is a very powerful yet completely
free service that does dozens of extremely useful functions. Internet
is truly a marvelous place - where else would you find such high
quality service completely free of cost ?
This does not even require registration - please visit http://www.dnsstuff.com/
and perform dozens of IP and DNS related functions.
To trace geographic location of an IP address - please use Tracert
(Traces the route packets)
3. American Registry for Internet Numbers
(ARIN)
An excellent free source for finding information
on IP number. To use this service, please visit
http://www.arin.net/whois/index.html . Enter the IP into the
search text box and hit "Submit". If the IP address belongs to an
organization in North America or sub-Saharan Africa it will display
the details of owner of the IP address.
For organizations located outside ARIN's geographical area of responsibility
- here are other resources
To determine in which geographical area a particular country is located,
see the List of Countries in Regional Registry Geographical Areas
at
http://www.arin.net/library/internet_info/countries.html
4. NetGeo - The Internet Geographic Database
NetGeo is a free service for locating geographical
position of an IP address. Though this free service is almost as
good as Visualware - much of its functionality is now lost as its
database is not updated regularly.
You may find more information about NetGeo at
http://www.caida.org/tools/utilities/netgeo/
To use this facility - please visit http://www.dnsstuff.com/
and use NetGeo IP Lookup
Above is a list of selected Internet resources, there
are many others. I hope this is sufficient to meet your expectations.
In case you need more - please feel free to suggest. I look forward
to your comments, feedback and suggestion
Happy and Productive Surfing
Dr. Amit K Chatterjee
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