Tracing an IP address. Help please.

scottduffy

scottduffy

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Hi Folks,

I'm not sure if this is even possible but last week my wife was sent a message through the messenger app stating that I was meeting some woman somewhere close to my work at a specific time that day. I was in my office doing no such thing so my wife basically laughed it off. The strange thing was it was sent from someone who claimed to be one of my best pals by the name of John Baird. I obviously contacted John who knew nothing about this and confirmed he doesn't use Facebook or messenger and I have no reason to doubt him. Then on Friday night she received two emails which were sent to numerous providers and began with her name@yahoo, @plusnet and so on. These ones were pretty grim and showed a picture of me with this girl from a works night out sat a table with other peoples arms around us, just your normal works night out photo. At this point we contacted the cops and they've said if it continues they will look into it but understandably it's not priority for them. These messages were sent from an email address bairdie21@gmail.com which cemented my belief that it wasn't my friend as his name is spelled Bairdy.

She has now had a friend request through Facebook from this John Baird which she's ignored and blocked him but when I checked out the page there is nothing there. Nothing at all except the photo of me and my colleague as this persons profile picture.

I was wondering if any of you guys knew how to trace the IP address if that's even possible as I would clearly like to know who it is and put a stop to it. I think it's someone in my office as no-one else would know both me and the girl they're talking about unless they work here. I also think it's sour grapes because after years of fighting with managers I am getting out of here with a redundancy package rather than them sacking me which you'll all know has happened twice only for me to be re-instated on appeal.

I have checked the metadata on the photo and it tells me nothing apart from it was taken at 35mm. No date or anything.


Any help would be greatly appreciated.




Regards

Scott
 
It is possible most definitely, but at some point you'll get stuck and if lucky get an approximate location and ISP. To find out who it belongs to is something for the police to request from the communication service provider.
 
I don't know if the source IP will be in the email it may contain in the header some of its transit path which might tell you who the ISP is.
Someone has a grudge just ignore it and let all your friends know.
 
i doubt you'll get anything useful from a gmail email header to be honest, looking at an old gmail email I have in my inbox the only IP it gives is the one of googles email servers.

edit: actually it might give the local senders IP. however, ISP often use a pool of reassignable IP. as said you'd have to request it's exact origin from the ISP via the police. however i'm not sure whether the police will be that interested.

look for the part of the header that says:

Received: from [192.168.0.3] ([xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx])

its the number where the xxx are that will be the one you want.
 
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Is the photo on your facebook already, or maybe a friend's?
I thought this sort of thing regularly resulted from dodgy facebook links.
 
As well as the police, you need to inform your ISP.
Whoever is sending these messages is committing offences under the Protection from Harassment Act and the Malicious Communications Act, and successful prosecutions have been achieved many times.
You also need to keep every message.

Have you considered the possibility that it's the woman in question sending the messages? Sounds off, I know, but often as not it's the case...even if they're good friends.
 
nickEnackEnoo said:
Is the photo on your facebook already, or maybe a friend's?
I thought this sort of thing regularly resulted from dodgy facebook links.
Click to expand...

I asked friends and colleagues if they'd seen the photo without going into it as I wasn't really wanting everyone to know about it more for Kerry's sake than mine but no-one seems to have displayed it on their pages. That seems strange to me as they've certainly taken it from somewhere.
 
Thanks for this Ruth. I will certainly do this as I've only reported it to the police. We have the emails but strangely enough the messenger message disappeared off my wife's phone as if it has been recalled but not sure if the sender can do that. Kerry said she didn't delete it so no idea where it went.

I did actually think about the girl in the picture but in the email it made pretty horrible references to her so that kinda put us off unless of course that was the purpose.

Normally these things wouldn't bother me but it's targeting my wife and because I'm sitting day in day out with these people that it is. Just makes coming to work a little awkward. On the plus side i'll only be here another 6 weeks or so. After that hopefully it'll end. Out of sight out of mind maybe.
 
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I reckon it is someone at work.
I think the honest way to address this is talk about it among your colleagues and let them know about it.
 
Mr Bump said:
I reckon it is someone at work.
I think the honest way to address this is talk about it among your colleagues and let them know about it.
Click to expand...


I had thought about this but because Kerry has never replied they won't actually know whether it's being received so I don't really want to encourage them. They have sent it to numerous emails and I'm sure they'll get read receipts but they won't know if it's her (apart from the messenger message). I was actually going to tell her when it started to reply telling them they've got the wrong person but didn't want them going on to do something else. We've never had anything like this happen before so it's a bit like we're worried about doing anything as we don't want to give them the satisfaction of knowing they're causing her distress. Hope that makes sense.
 
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Far better to let the emails disappear into space (from the sender's POV) so they've no idea that they have arrived. Discussing this will only feed the fire, and encourage more of the same.
 
scottduffy said:
Thanks for this Ruth. I will certainly do this as I've only reported it to the police. We have the emails but strangely enough the messenger message disappeared off my wife's phone as if it has been recalled but not sure if the sender can do that. Kerry said she didn't delete it so no idea where it went.

I did actually think about the girl in the picture but in the email it made pretty horrible references to her so that kinda put us off unless of course that was the purpose.

Normally these things wouldn't bother me but it's targeting my wife and because I'm sitting day in day out with these people that it is. Just makes coming to work a little awkward. On the plus side i'll only be here another 6 weeks or so. After that hopefully it'll end. Out of sight out of mind maybe.
Click to expand...

That could simply be a way of deflecting the attention away.
That you're leaving soon could have sparked it.
As I said, possibly not her, but I'd be careful.
Turn off read receipts if you can.
Get screen shots of every text and email, and print them if you can. Itself all evidence if needed.
 
viv1969 said:
That could simply be a way of deflecting the attention away.
That you're leaving soon could have sparked it.
As I said, possibly not her, but I'd be careful.
Turn off read receipts if you can.
Get screen shots of every text and email, and print them if you can. Itself all evidence if needed.
Click to expand...

I'll certainly do this from now on and the police have asked us to let them know each time so they can update the file. Thanks again.
 
just a thought but she could ad them and when they sy bla bla blaaaaaaaaaa just get her to reply lol (we are in a open relationship he f**** who he wants to) it will go 2 ways after that they will see there going to get no where or they will crank it up and may slip up and reveal who they are ?
 
The missing Facebook message may be as a result of her blocking this person.

Also I had a Facebook message from a friend of a friend. I didn't reply straight away and when I did go to reply the message wasn't in my inbox on my app. I had to go into Facebook using the browser and eventually managed to find the message.
 
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