Module 2 – Email Task Q1

1. What information about a user’s email, the origin of a message, and the path it took, can you glean from an email message?

When most people think of email headers a lot of people consider the email header to be this, a basic display by which both sender and recipients are able to glean basic information on the origin, destination and time an email was sent.

However, an email header is actually far more complex and the above is only a simplied header version of the full header. The full header, as demonstrated below, contains the full details of every server the email has passed through to reach its destination.

(*note: the red spraypaint has been used to cover the details of my full email address in order to protect my privacy and which I would prefer not to be attacked with spam.)

Lets go through the details of this header in more details so we can get a better idea of the path it took (note: if you are trying to follow the path an email took from sender to recipient always start at the bottom and work your way up)

Here we can see the email sent from the Library inbox to the uni mail server, with instruction where it is to be sent.

Lastly we can see that the email has been sent directly from the uni mail server to the optus email server.

To find out more about Email headers go to About.com’s “reading email headers“

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