Viewing full email headers

If you ever need to double check that an email sender is really what who he says he is, you should access the full email header.

To view the full header information on Mac Mail,

Select the message in question

Select menu item View, Show, Raw Source

Alternatively, you can use option-apple-U as a keyboard shortcut.

To help you understand the message header, use an email header reading tool such as Mail Tracker v1.1

Here is the result of email header analyzes for a spam message I received earlier today:

Received: from 2erize76.tk0li5.adelphia.net (bzq-84-108-207-33.cablep.bezeqint.net [84.108.207.33]) by mac.com (Xserve/smtpin39/MantshX 4.0) with ESMTP id k79GU2lK006849;Wed, 09 Aug 2006 09:32:10 -0700 (PDT)

SUMMARY - The reverse lookup name does not match the 'from' name (code=N). Sequence error -The 'by' name does match the 'from' reverse name in the header above (code=S). (more information.)

If you received a spam or fraudulent message, you can always report it by forwarding it to spam@uce.gov.

For even more info, check out SpamLinks web site - everything you didn't want to have to know about spam.

Cristiano Pierry