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Is she lying??? IP Question

M

mherz

macrumors member
Original poster
Aug 11, 2004
55
0
Hi
(this is not specifically Mac related, sorry about that)
I got two emails from someone using a yahoo email acount. In one that person is saying that she is in Montreal, Canada, in the second, that she is in Hamilton, Canada using "a friends computer". In both cases though, when I go to the email source header information, the IP adress, that yahoo received the message from is identical. It says: Received: from [70.48.126.167] by web41115.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP.

Is she lying??? :( :mad: :( :mad:

This is a sympatico.ca IP address, appearently a canadian internet provider. As far as I know, she doesnt have a laptop. Is there ANY possibility that using two different computers in two different locations you can end up having identical IP addresses?

(I know that my question, with the obvious implications of a female person involved, opens up a huge range of funny, silly, inquisitive or cynical remarks full of Schadenfreude . Just: Please dont!
spare me the trouble.


Thanks for any info!
 
Hmmm.
the yahoo-mail webserver is given also in the email header, a few lines before (it is: [66.218.93.26]), To my knowledge the other IP number is the computer that one was using while logged into yahoo mail and typing the message. No?
 
Since its web based, it will send it from the yahoo mail server, which I'm sure there are a couple, but they will be close in ip address range.
 
If you have to use IP tracking tools to figure out if your girl is lying to you, you have other problems to worry about.
 
almost impossible two random ips would be the same. she may be lying to you. but you obviously have doubts in the first place.. you two need a chat.
 
Linkety may help in your computer issues but not your relationship which seems to be headed the way of the ISA bus.

A 100% packet loss. An error in transmit. Lost in cyberspace.

Get where I'm going with these technical terms? If you don't trust someone then you can't have a relationship with them.
 
mherz said:
...
It says: Received: from [70.48.126.167] by web41115.mail.yahoo.com via HTTP.
...
Click to expand...
Based on that address, which is an IP based in Toronto (toronto-HSE-ppp4026381.sympatico.ca), they were probably sent from the same computer. If it's not dialup, there is no way they'd get the same IP address. And if it is dialup, the odds of getting the same IP address in two different sessions is extremely low.

The odds are that she is lying to you.
 
Thanks for all your replies. (And all your relationship advice! Yah yah, i should have known :rolleyes: ;) anyway, its no disaster)

Mechcozmo seems pretty spot on regarding the non-technical issues, and Bear regarding the technical side. But this opens up another issue:

She must be in Montreal! Can you get the ip with this toronto description while being in Montreal? (Apart from doing a dial-in via modem and telephone line and specifically dialing a Toronto internet provider on a Toronto local number, which would be pretty silly). Does the Toronto label necesarily point to the geographical location of the computer where the mail was written on, or is it maybe just a description of the company (sympatico, based in Toronto) as internet provider?
Anyone?
 
mherz said:
...
She must be in Montreal! Can you get the ip with this toronto description while being in Montreal? (Apart from doing a dial-in via modem and telephone line and specifically dialing a Toronto internet provider on a Toronto local number, which would be pretty silly). Does the Toronto label necesarily point to the geographical location of the computer where the mail was written on, or is it maybe just a description of the company (sympatico, based in Toronto) as internet provider?
Anyone?
Click to expand...
Some companies have local numbers that redirect to a regional bank of modems. So she could be in Montréal and have an IP address that has a Toronto label.
 
mherz said:
She must be in Montreal! Can you get the ip with this toronto description while being in Montreal? (Apart from doing a dial-in via modem and telephone line and specifically dialing a Toronto internet provider on a Toronto local number, which would be pretty silly). Does the Toronto label necesarily point to the geographical location of the computer where the mail was written on, or is it maybe just a description of the company (sympatico, based in Toronto) as internet provider?
Anyone?
Click to expand...

Again, this is HIGHLY unlikely for any of 3 reasons...

Firstly, Bell Canada (and Sympatico too, I think) are headquartered in Montreal.

Secondly, Montreal is certainly a significant enough market for Sympatico to run many many types of servers (and backups) locally to fulfill customer needs in the area.

Finally, yes, an IP does generally indicate the physical location of the computer or server it belongs to. It's not always 100% accurate, but usually when it's not, it's damn close (ie. IP indicates the city but the computer is in the suburbs of that city).

I'm afraid things are looking dim for you my friend. Best of luck.
 
ok, so she must be lying! Whatever. She wasnt that great anyway.
oh yeah. Grrrrrrrrr! :eek:
 
*puts on dr. phil hat*

The fact that you are going through this much effort to see if "she's lying" shows your inability to trust this girl, so I would say you will not be happy in the long run and should not waste your time.
 
Everybody, pay attention. They sent it from a yahoo account. Yahoo mail is web based. So when she sends mail, its comes from the IP address of the Yahoo mail server, not the computer she is at. Yahoo doesn't setup a SMTP server on the girls computer just to send mail. If someone from my company sends mail though OWA (Outlook Web Access), it comes from the companies IP, not the home computer of the employee. So she isn't lying, she just ends up having her mail get sent from the same server.

And if you are trying to track a girl, most likely someone you met online, by where she sends her mail and the ip address it comes from, you have problems, and need to see someone about it.
 
varmit said:
Everybody, pay attention. They sent it from a yahoo account. Yahoo mail is web based. So when she sends mail, its comes from the IP address of the Yahoo mail server, not the computer she is at.
Click to expand...

Not true. The headers should contain the originating IP address. Here's a test message I sent to myself from a yahoo webmail account as an example:

Code: 
Message-ID: <20050407171151.76024.qmail@web90101.mail.scd.yahoo.com>
[b][color=red]Received: from [152.16.xxx.xxx][/b][/color] by web90101.mail.scd.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 07 Apr 2005 10:11:51 PDT
Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 10:11:51 -0700 (PDT)

The originating IP was correct.
 
yellow said:
Not true. The headers should contain the originating IP address. Here's a test message I sent to myself from a yahoo webmail account as an example:

Code: 
Message-ID: <20050407171151.76024.qmail@web90101.mail.scd.yahoo.com>
[b][color=red]Received: from [152.16.xxx.xxx][/b][/color] by web90101.mail.scd.yahoo.com via HTTP; Thu, 07 Apr 2005 10:11:51 PDT
Date: Thu, 7 Apr 2005 10:11:51 -0700 (PDT)

The originating IP was correct.
Click to expand...
Actually, it depends on the ISP, whether you have a static private IP, a static public IP, a public dynamic IP, dial-up, etc. In some cases you'll see the actual originating IP, other times you'll see an IP address in the address pool of your ISP. In short, it depends.
 
daveL said:
Actually, it depends on the ISP, whether you have a static private IP, a static public IP, a public dynamic IP, dial-up, etc. In some cases you'll see the actual originating IP, other times you'll see an IP address in the address pool of your ISP. In short, it depends.
Click to expand...

I have never seen a SMTP server, nor web/POP/IMAP client behave in that way. The headers of email are supposed to (by standard) contain the IP of the originating source/host. That's how the RFC 821 standard works.

Can you provide examples?
 
I must second that. As far as I know, the email header always contains the IP number that the originating computer (where the message was physically typed in) has had assigned, either static, or, if it is a dial-in connection, dynamically assigned for the time of its connection. The only exception that I know of is, when the computer is behind a firewall, and then you only see the IP number of the router and all computers within the network will apear to have the identical IP number.
Isn't that correct? I'm no expert in this field, but this is what I think is correct.
 
Who cares, this kid has problems if he is checking up where a girl is email from.
 
yellow said:
I have never seen a SMTP server, nor web/POP/IMAP client behave in that way. The headers of email are supposed to (by standard) contain the IP of the originating source/host. That's how the RFC 821 standard works.

Can you provide examples?
Click to expand...
At the end of the day, I guess it depends on what you can discern from the IP address; obviously, there will always be one.

Case in point:

My daughter has a yahoo email account. When she was out here (MT) the email header showed that she sent the email from the Kalispell library. I suspect that that kind of definitive location, based on the IP address in the email header, is what the OP was looking for. She then went back east. Her subsequent emails show an origin IP address that just ends up being one of a zillion in Level 3's class A IP network, which is registered in Denver, the Level 3 HQ. The IPs vary from one email to the next, e.g. 4.185.147.107, 4.185.60.7. Yes, there is an originating IP address, but it tells you virtually nothing about the origin of the email. In particular, it offers no clue about the location of the sender of the message, so it would not provide the information the OP was looking for. So, my point was, depending on the ISP used to send the email, you may or may not be able to discern the location from which it was sent. I can provide the email headers, if you'd like to see them.

I'm sorry if I didn't do a very good job communicating this distinction in my first post.
 
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