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Outlook 2003 Security and Privacy

View E-Mail Internet Headers

SUMMARY: Help detect where unwanted e-mail in your Outlook 2003 Inbox is actually coming from.

When you receive an e-mail message in Outlook 2003, Outlook normally displays the e-mail's sender, recipient, date/time of message sent, subject, etc., the basic information. However, e-mail addresses can be forged, and if you receive suspected spam messages, it may be beneficial to view the e-mail's routing information to help determine which computer or network actually sent the message.

1. Right-click on a suspect message.
2. Choose "Options" from the popup menu.
3. Look for the section "Internet headers". Depending on the e-mail, you should see more detailed routing information, such as when and where the e-mail was received on each network, SMTP message IDs, MIME type information, and more.

Note that most of this information can be forged, so be careful before you send those "stop sending me spam!" requests to ensure the information is absolutely correct.

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1. Steve (12/02/2009 16:21:58)

In this header information, the "MIME From" email address will be displayed. But how can you use Outlook to view the "SMTP From" email address?

Spammers are getting smart. With the proliferation of SPF usage, they're using a technique to get around it by using an "SMTP From" address that has no SPF record and an "MIME From" address that looks familiar to the user. This will cause a soft-fail for SPF but most filters will still allow the mail to proceed without be labeled as Spam.