How can I find someone's IP address by e-mailing them?

Question

I want to find someone's IP address by sending them an e-mail. I know this is possible, but I need someone to provide a script or other means of attaining the IP address. This is assuming they do not respond back. Please answer ASAP.

Answer 1

As Bernz said, the only way is to embed something (such as an image, aka "web bug") in an HTML document sent as part of the e-mail.  However, that will only work if:

1 - The person has HTML e-mail viewing enabled.

and

2 - The person has viewing of external images in HTML e-mails enabled.

Also, even if you get the recipient's IP address, you only get the IP address at the time they viewed the e-mail.  Unless they have a static IP address from their ISP, their IP is dynamic and can change at virtually any time.

Why do you need to know a person's IP address, anyway?  It serves virtually no purpose, unless they want to give you access on their system, in which case you could simply ask them for their current IP address.

- kb -

Answer 2

Just out of curiosity - why would you want to do this?

Sounds a little nefarious to me... like either a spammer or stalker in the making.

Be careful what you get into. The Dept of Homeland Security and the NSA are starting to get pretty serious with hackers. It may sound "cool", but in reality, it isn't.

Answer 3

Can I have your email, and I will send it. :)

Answer 4

The only way of doing this is for the user to open a file (e.g. a blank pixel for example) on your server. This way, you'll have the person's IP address then the file is accessed.

For example, in PHP, you could create a file called getpixel.php that returns a pixel GIF image (just sent the right headers and this is quite easy to do). Then, in your email, write your text IN HTML with a tag like this:

<img src="http://mysite.com/getpixel.php">

In you getpixel.php script, simply look at the $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] variable and store it in a database.

That's the only way I know of. Apart from this, you have no way to know how and where an email is accessed.

Good luck.