Email Management Tools / Email Address Trace

[chrisjj]

Does anyone find this works? Here (10.8.2-STABLE-120) on e.g. billg@microsoft.com I get just a graphic (!) containing the address and a dot. Followed by a legend. No trace info.

Thanks.

[LiNUxG0d]

Hi!

In my experience, this tool really isn't very useful. You can't really "track" an email per se.

Don't bother using it. I mean, if you want to know who is operating a specific email address, try using http://www.dnsstuff.com/ and do a DNS lookup on the domain specifying the MX in the dropdown.

You'll know who handles mail for the FQDN by checking MX records.

Take care!

Jamie

[chrisjj]

> In my experience, this tool really isn't very useful.

Meaning you have experience of it working?

[LiNUxG0d]

> In my experience, this tool really isn't very useful.

Meaning you have experience of it working?

Actually, no. I have experience of it not working on all servers we host, or not giving a desireable result.

What exactly is "tracing an email"? Email has 3 important things:

1- A username (whatever)
2- A FQDN (@wherever.com)
3- An MX server that handles mail for the FQDN.

There really isn't any more offerable information in the IT world that one can get based on an email address. You don't directly own bill@microsoft.com so you only have access to the above information. This would imply that it would work for your OWN FQDN or owned domains...

The logical way of using that feature would be, "Enter an email address on this server and we'll give you the server path to where the mail is stored."

Kinda like: you@yourdomain.com would return /home/yourdoma/mail/yourdomain.com/you/

In my experience though, it doesn't do it. I have servers running MBox and MailDir and both do the same thing. They just have a picture of the email addy I typed in and NO information is offered up.

Anyway, you're not crazy, it doesn't work well,

Hehehehe.

Jamie

[chrisjj]

Thanks.
.