On  4 Dec 98 at 10:56, Elizabeth Boston wrote:

> If you have an  e-mail address,  is there a way to do a reverse
> search to find out whom it is listed?

  Not generally.  Some mail hosts enforce a policy of relating e-mail
usernames to legal names, and if your intended target is on such a
host AND YOU CAN GET A LIST OF USER (REAL) NAMES ON THAT HOST[*],
then you can make a pretty informed guess.  Otherwise you're stuck
with whatever they told their mailer software or included in their
signature.

  If you're trying to track down a medium-sneaky spammer, you can use
Internic (www.internic.com) to find out who owns the originating
domain.  [I say medium-sneaky because this doesn't work so well if
they've faked the domain name....]
  If your looking at email headers, newer versions of mail server
software include not only the name that the originating machine
claimed to be, but also its IP address; you can use ARIN
(www.arin.com) to see who that address belongs to (generally, what
ISP handles it, not the actual end user).  For instance, I've
received mail claiming domains like yahoo and hotmail, and forwarded
through servers in Eastern Europe -- from a machine that claimed to
be in Japan, but for some reason was using the IP address of one of
UUNet's dial-up lines in NYC....

>         Is there a place on the internet where one can do this?

  There are equivalents to ARIN for Europe (RIPE) and the Far East
(APNIC), and there's a page that links to InterNIC equivalents for
different national domains (InterNIC does .com, .net, .org, and maybe
.edu and .mil only).

  Not sure how much this has helped.  If you have a specific incident
you're looking into, contact me off-list and I may be able to help.

David G

                         PCSOFT's List Owner's:
                      Bob Wright<[log in to unmask]>
                        Drew Dunn<[log in to unmask]>