So you thought sending emails from Hotmail protected your privacy? Not at all..
(These are Windows-specific instructions, but there are equivalent tools on other systems)

  • Download and install NeoTrace
  • Open the message you were sent, and look at the headers. In Outlook this is done by opening the mail, and going to the View | Options menu. Other mail readers have other methods.
  • See the line that says X-Originating-IP? The number after that (in square brackets) is the IP Address of the machine that was used to send the message to Hotmail.
  • Type the address into NeoTrace, or if you're more techy you could perform a Reverse DNS and a WhoIs lookup manually.
Simple, eh? See also How to find out where a Napster user lives for a little more information.

By the way, I'd like to make a point about privacy; You may think that it's a little ethically dubious of me to node this information, but I can assure you that it is widely known in hacker circles. You have the right to know this too.

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