

However if he or she is using a desktop client (like Microsoft Outlook) or a mobile device to send that email, the IP address is often included in the outgoing message. Gmail doesn’t include the IP address of the sender when the sender is using Gmail’s web interface to send email. Option A: Gmail may include the IP Address If the IP address of John is not available, because he is sending email using Gmail, how can Elizabeth determine John’s geographic location? There two options: As such, Gmail may hide sender IP address information from outgoing mail headers in some circumstances.

IP addresses can be considered sensitive information. The receiver (Elizabeth) can then perform a simple geo-lookup against that IP address to find the approximate geographic location of the message sender.īoth Yahoo! Mail and Hotmail include IP addresses in outgoing message headers but if John is sending an email address using Gmail, or Gmail for Google Apps, his IP address won’t be included in the message. When John sends an email message to Elizabeth, the IP address of the sender (John’s computer) is included in the header of the outgoing email message.
