You log into email, create a draft email, THEN turn on VPN, and send email. New (masked) IP address used or not, to send that email ?
Sounds pretty high stakes, Iād test it to be sure.
I think you need to research how modern email services work.
Only the IP address of the server matters, not the IP of the device you use to connect to the service.
No one can tell the IP address you sent an email from unless they have access to Googleās servers to see where your account logged in from (assuming youāre using google, swap for whatever service youāre using)
You fucked up, didnāt you
Yes.
Itās the actual IP that caused the sending that is placed into headers.
Depends on your definition of send. The mail server will log your VPN address, the destination mail server will log the IP address of whatever mail server it gets from the sending mail server.
When you say ālog intoā email, Iām assuming a remote service like gmail? In any case, itās going to be the mail serverās IP not yours that accompanies the mail, unless you are running the mail server in house. The mail server will know your email address.
Iād also assume the email server logs the IP used when the account was created and everyone used when logged in.
thanks so much. please help me understand gmail servers a little bit better, first.
Letās say Bob lives in Wisconsin.
He logs into his gmail WITHOUT a VPN. So, he is connected via a gmail server near Wisconsin?
If Bob logs into his gmail WITH a VPN (letās say a VPN server in Romania, Europe)
heāll be connected to a gmail server near Romania?
Am I understanding this correctly?
Not with webmail. Or any interface that is not SMTP
Good to know. Thanks!
There are IP look up websites where you can copy/paste email headers, and look at the mail servers IP address.
But:
Any āemail sender IP look upā software/extensions etc. out there?
Just wondering.
Iām not 100% sure on the exact intricacies of gmail, if itās anything like Microsoft provided emails then no, the server where your email comes from is always the same, and that server would just see you connect to it from the different locations.
Iād suspect Gmail servers are located in regions based on where the account is first made.
Remember, when you send an email, it isnāt coming from your PC, itās coming from the mail server, when you write an email on Gmail the contents you want in the message are sent from your PC to the mail server, then the mail server sends the email to the recipients email server, which then alerts the account owner that there is a new email waiting for them on that server.
If the recipient looks at the headers of the email, they would see that Bob sent the email from whatever server his account was configured for (this may be variable, but I doubt itās related to where Bob happens to be connected from at the time of sending). They would not see where Bob connected to the server from.
The email server isnāt affected by your VPN, it just sees you as connecting from 2 different locations.
Not with all, many actually mask the senderās IP since they already have meta information from your HTTPS session. Even SMTP can mask the senders IP, my own MTA does.
HTTP/S services do not typically include the HTTP session data in SMTP headers. You would see the IP of the origin MUA (the web sever running the UI) and all MTAās in the delivery path, unless headers are removed along the way. It would be highly unusual to see the end userās origin IP address in the headers.
They donāt at all. SMTP clients donāt reveal as much data. Client and source IP with credentials.
Webmail has all your session data; browser, source IP, WebRTC data, etc etc. Most webmail excludes the IP you came from, generally for privacy.
I should have stated; depends on mail provider.
Itās conceivable that some webmail providers could add a header containing client IP, but itās not standard practice.
SMTP clients donāt reveal credentials (not sure if thatās what you meant), but the originating client IP would likely be included in the headers received by the recipient.