Articles tagged: email headers

A bright, well-lit mail room with shelves filled with letters and packages. In the center, a person wearing a casual outfit is holding a letter up and examining it closely using a magnifying glass. The person has a focused expression, with the magnifying glass highlighting the details of the letter. The background includes various mailroom elements such as labeled boxes, a sorting table, and some open envelopes. The overall scene is modern and tidy, with a focus on the letter and the magnifying glass.

What Do Spam Filters Look At?

Spam filters can be sophisticated or simple. I’ll look at some of the characteristics of email that spam filters check.

Who's on the BCC line?

How Do I View the BCC Recipients on an Email I’ve Received?

BCC is a way to send copies of email without all recipients being visible. But can you still view the BCC’ed?

A magnifying glass over a maze of passages all showing various portions of text.

How Do I Tell Who Sent an Email?

It’s extremely unlikely. I’ll walk you through why that is and one way you might get lucky.

Bouncing Email

Why Does Email Bounce?

Email can bounce for many reasons. I’ll look at several of the most common email bounce messages and try to interpret what they really mean.

Touch Keyboard

Tip of the Day: View Full Headers on Outgoing Mail

Why Do I Get Spam Not Addressed to Me? How Spammers Do It, and What Steps You Can Take

Why Do I Get Spam Not Addressed to Me? How Spammers Do It, and What Steps You Can Take

Spammers use many techniques to slide their garbage into your inbox. BCCing you on messages is a common way.

Message Source display in Outlook.com

How Do I Find the IP Address of an Email’s Sender?

Determining the IP address of an email sender is difficult at best, and usually impossible. Sometimes you get lucky.

Defining email address and display name

Why Is an Email Address Sometimes in Angle Brackets?

Computers use email addresses to route email. Angle brackets are used when a more human-readable name is also included.

I got two identical spam messages from two friends. Which of us has been hacked?

It’s unlikely that you’ve been hacked. It’s possible that your friends have both been hacked, but this kind of thing can happen without anyone being hacked at all!

Email Envelope

How can I prove that I didn’t send a particular email?

So much information in email can be spoofed that it’s difficult to prove where an email came from unless you look at the headers.

Email Envelope

How Do I Tell Someone They’re Entering Their Email Address Wrong?

Many websites ask you type your email address in twice for a reason: there’s a high percentage of people who cannot type their email address in correctly once.

Something's Up

Why is email I’m sending being received by someone I’m not sending to?

This is a frustrating situation that happens regularly to businesses running email lists. More than likely someone on your list is automatically forwarding. There is one way you may be able to track down the source.