Understanding Email Header

Sometimes we receive spam emails which are targeted toward specific users. These carefully drafted emails are difficult to ignore as spam. Such emails need careful analysis. E.g., Some emails we receive contains the name and signature of the person known to us. The displayed "from" and "to" address in the mail client can also be forged. The following guidelines will help you to differentiate spam emails.

1. Check the Sender's name, email content, and subject. If it seems something abnormal or unusual start checking for email header.
2. Check the "from" email address. If it is unknown to you and not of interest to you, it can be spam.
3. Check the email header now, as described next, to ensure that the email is not from an impersonator or spammer.

The steps explained in next section will help you find out the email address of the actual sender.

Video description of various interfaces and understanding the headers is available at https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCkBlng0GssGjR0Me8P0OmA

In next sub-sections we illustrate by images. The highlighted areas in the images are numbered and explained.

Subsections

• Locating Full Email Header
• Email Header Analysis