
It's worth noting that email header tampering and spoofing is rather easy for cybercriminals these days - all they need is an SMTP server and a mailing software to launch a phishing attack. If the email address in this field is not the same as the recipient's actual email address, then it can be a sign of message tampering that warrants an investigation. It's one of the major things to check during email analysis as it can provide details of phishing activities.

ĭelivered-To: email header field contains email address of the intended recipient. To understand email header fields in Gmail, we take a message of a sender as an example. This tool will highlight the parameters in the entire text. You can either go through these parameters directly or copy and paste the text in Google's email header analyzer for better visibility. This will display email header parameters in a new window. Next to Reply icon, click the drop-down menu icon and select Show original.Go to your Gmail Inbox and click the email whose header parameters you want to see.To view the header of a Gmail message, follow these steps: This information and other email header fields can help in determining the legitimacy of a suspicious or malicious email. This information includes recipients' and senders' names, time of sending/receiving email message, email client, internet service provider (ISP), IP address of the sender, etc. Since criminals often forge messages to avoid detection, email forensics experts need to perform email header analysis to extract and collect crucial evidence.Įmail headers contain vital information of the path that the message has traversed before reaching its final destination. To investigate cases related to cyber-crimes where emails are being used, digital forensic experts scan relevant emails for evidence.

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We have shared step-wise instructions for viewing email headers and performing email header analysis in Gmail and different Outlook versions. Summary: In this article, we have explained different email header fields and their role in email forensics.
