Information on Email source?

Hi there

I have a reasonable level of computer knowledge, but it falls down when it comes to the more technical aspects of networks etc. I am hoping that someone here can help me out and answer a few questions regarding something that is happening to me right now.

Basically, my employer has a homepage that allows for people to send an email to them via a web contact form that requires they provide a name and an email address but no other identifying information. My issue is that someone, somewhere has submitted an email that contains serious but false allegations against me, but has provided what I suspect to be a false name. The email address is a real email address but is an institutional one rather than an individual’s email address so the person has tried to mask their identity.

Obviously I would like to know who is behind it, so I was wondering if anyone could give me any pointers as to what sort of information is actually retrievable in these circumstances. What sort of information will be available in terms of the original source of the email (an institutional network, ip addresses, anything really) and what are the chances of narrowing it down to a specific individual? And what sort of information will be available from analyzing the data at the location of the network where the information was received, and at the location from where it was sent?

Any input would be gratefully accepted…

If it was sent via a web form as you say, unless your employer has logs where you can match the time it was submitted against the time in the logs, there's no more info you can glean.

suhailc said:

If it was sent via a web form as you say, unless your employer has logs where you can match the time it was submitted against the time in the logs, there's no more info you can glean.

Click to expand...

Well we know the time it was received, and there should be logs available. What I am hoping is that there will be header information that at the very least gives the IP of the sender, and work back from there to try and identify an individual. If it is indeed an institution network then it should be feasible to work backwards and find who was logged in, and who sent a message at that point, right? The message is received in email format, so I am hoping there is relevant information that gets sent along with the message...

Whether or not there are headers depends on how the web form used was programmed.

This thread is quite off-topic for the DirectAdmin forum; I'm moving it to Off-Topic Discussion.

Jeff