Is there a way to decipher the country or state or city from which an
email I received was sent? For example, although many email addresses
refer to the country within the address, many do not. If someone sends
me an email from "name@gmail.com", is there a way to figure out the
geographical area the person was in when they sent it?

---

Clarification of Question by brian22-ga on 07 Sep 2005 23:51 PDT

Thanks!

---

Clarification of Question by brian22-ga on 11 Sep 2005 20:44 PDT

I?m going to be using an email account while traveling around and want
to see if my friends can guess where I am based on my descriptions. 
Can someone cheat and know where I am based on an IP address or
anything like that? Or will it be fair game?

You need to find the originating IP Address and check a whois database:
1. view full header information on the email that your investigating
2. find the line: X-Originating-IP: [64.4.61.201]
3. use a whois server like: http://ws.arin.net/cgi-bin/whois.pl
4. Enter the IP from step 2 and search
5. This will display a lot of information on the owner of the IP
address (in this case the email was sent using hotmail and thus the
originating geographical location, as far as Microsoft registered the
information, is One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052