Sounds like your best friend needs therapy not computer help

Basically you cannot trace email addresses. I have about 5 with various providers but there is no cross reference. My sister has a Canadian email address yet lives in Scotland.

You would be further ahead doing a reverse lookup of his telephone number on Google - or if your friend has it Google his name - if it is real.

You can search his ip from properties in his email header and maybe turn up some forums he visits. Do a tracert on it to make sure he lives about where he says.

momcat, I respectfully suggest that you enter "Nigerian scammers" into google and get your friend to read and understand a few of the results before it is too late!

Colin

Here is a link that might be useful: Just one of many warning articles

I would pay a professional to check this guy out. My neighbor's daughter married a man without seeing his home but she did meet him. He was the answer to every woman's dreams. She quit her job, sold her car and moved to Texas. He kicked her out the first week, gave her dog to one of his daughter's and said it ran away. She was stranded in Arlington, Texas with no money or place to live. She went to legal aid and they found out he had been married 13 times before her.

I told them to have a detective check him out before she married him, but what do I know about anything.

BTW Why would she have to move in with you? Nobody is moving in with me ever. I would take in a child if it needed a home and food to survive, but not an adult.

Thanks for the feedbacks..
As far as moving in with me, if she were to end up destitute, she certainly would be welcome to move in, that's what friends are for.
She is just too trusting a person with a good heart. I would really like her to meet a good partner to share her golden years with.
Mikie, please give me more details about searching ip's.
Thanks, Momcat

problem with checking his ip is if he is a con artist and scammer which so many of them are looking at his ip address won't be much help because he will be smart enough to have covered those tracks he would use a proxy or bounce it around so it could not lead back. I rarely trust ip info these days too many easy ways around that, especially for those kind of people.

Bottom line is she needs to grow up and smarten up and you are enabling her if you do let her know that she can depend on you should she fall prey yet again. She needs to hit the bottom and see what her mistakes are to learn from them.
I know it is hard to do when you are a friend I have been there done that but when it is time to let them fall you just have to some times.
Falling for a con once is enough period.

ravencajun; My thoughts exactly!!!! Bravo to you.
momcat2000; Do not take any of the above, nor what I'm about to say personal. You, I would love to have as a friend. But, I believe that zep516 hit the nail on the head. No one needs someone that bad. Your friend really needs to find out why she is so insecure so that she can take hold of her future. Love will find her. But, she has to find herself first. You can't search for love, insecurity attracks vulnerability. Guide your friend in that direction, if you can. Donna

How do you do an email tracer...just by putting it in Google? I put a guy's Yahoo email address in the Google search box and it brought up California. He is supposed to live in Texas. So, not being very computer literate, I don't know if this meant yahoo is based in California or if California is where this person is really from. I did't write to him again although he seems very nice and sincere.....don't they all, lol.

Might go to Geobytes and put in his IP# from Properties on his email ... if you can figure which IP is his.
Notice its percentage of certainty .. its seldom 100% positive.

I know she has issues, I'm a licienced foster mom and computer socializing can be a big problem with some of the kids. You would think an adult would know better though.

The problem with using IP address for geographic location is that even if he's not spoofing the IP address, it may not reliably show where he is. If I connect using my Verizon card, no matter where I am in the country, checking my location via my IP address shows that I'm in New York.

that is correct it will often simply show the location of your ISP not the actual location of where the person lives, I really don't much depend on ip info these days at all it is just too easy to mess with that info or get ISP info from the lookup rather than the persons info/

And where are you at right now... your ip shows at....

Mikie,

Where am I?

Terry

terry, marooma ... you're on AOL,, you cant tell where aol ip is ... but it says NY, NY 80% certainy --- but an aol proxy cache probably is on a computer located in the middle of usa or up there in NY area.

Trace route from here in florida takes me north to atlanta to ashville then to darlington probably .. DTC .. which probably is Denver Tech Center is where the proxy cache is.

Mikie,

Good work. I was just trying to show the original poster how hard it is to find people using their IP. As far as AOL goes according to wikipedia, in 2006 AOL started sending an XFF header along with the their proxy's IP that can definitely identify the orginal ISP's address but most people don't know that.
I am physically located in Biloxi, Mississippi on Bellsouth DSL but I opened AOL-7.0 and made my last post. If you run this one through geolocator it should show my actual location.

Terry

Geobytes cant find you... but another source shows Gulfport just a fraction away.. is probably where your gateway is actually located.

Ip shows as assigned to "bix", I assume that is short for your hometown.

Here is a link that might be useful: maybe show.. Gulfport

Mikie,

Another good job. Your link is even correct about my OS and browser, Windows XP and Firefox 2. Thanks.

Terry