Lois & Clark Forums Forums Fan Fiction Fanfic Related FFQ: email

it's early 1996. 28.8 modems are blazing fast and 14.4 isn't bad. the term "dialup" doesn't exist because the few alternatives are too rare to warrant it. the elite flaunt their ISDN connections, but it doesn't really get them very much unless the site they're trying to look at (one of only several hundred registered domains, at the most) happens to have been precached by one of their ISP's servers. most of what you get from the net is within your ISP, and some ISPs won't even let you send an email that isn't entirely text-based because they can't be sure that the recipient is capable of recieving anything else.

someone with an "i can't believe it's not AOL" account emails you. the sender's account is designed for privacy. it may or may not be a secondary screenname.

what can you find out about the sender from just that email?

the header information will tell you what servers the message passed through, so you can figure out the general area the sender was in (assuming the sender used a local access number rather than dialing long distance), but with only a handful of servers in each area, that doesn't tell you too much, especially since you're in a big city.

what else might you be able to find out, and how difficult would it be to find it?

Paul

You can probably find out what email program and what kind of computer they use from the headers. Many email programs put the program name in a header, if not from the order of the headers and other things you can spot it.

Get an account on that isp and use the unix shell account that you probably got back then to see who was logged in at the time it was sent.

Get phone company records and see who was dialed in at the time.

hi, thanks for responding.

no. no unix shell. remember, this is an AOL-type account. that means a -- oh, i'll be polite and say "user friendly" -- graphical interface, designed for win 3.11, win 95, or macOS.

the email program is, of course, the ISP's own software. (AOL 2.0 or something like that)

checking with the phone company is an interesting thought, but you'd still get a decent-sized list (maybe 20-ish?) of people dialed into that particular number. not even sure how the records would look, because, as i understand it, each access number leads you to a room full of servers and the calls get shunted around to whichever one is available. never really took the time to find out how that works.

got any other thoughts?

I asked your question elsewhere .

thanks, rivka. that was helpful.

nice little coincidence there that the boards are named hatrack.

so, from what i can tell, you should be able to track down the server used to send the email, the name/address of the computer that logged into that server, the email address used to send the message, and that's about it.

maybe more depending on the setup, but in this case, we have a careful user who wishes to remain anonymous logging into a fairly secure server.

so, that should do it. thanks!

Paul, pondering phone possibilities

Anytime. I'm actually surprised only Bok and fugu replied -- usually computer-related questions get more responses. I think some of Hatrack's resident computer geeks weren't on today.

I didn't even think of that!