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mgazzaFlag for United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

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ip address from an email address

does any one know how to get an ip from an e-mail address i know it can be done!
thanks!!
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ginsonic
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I doubt .
Which IP-address do you want to get? The user's? (I mean the guy who own the e-mail address)

That is not possible. At most, you can get the IP for the e-mail server that's responsible for an address.

If somebody has surprised you by knowing your IP from an e-mail: Many many times, you can see the sender's IP-address from an e-mail.
I mean: an actual e-mail which you sent to somebody. The IP "can" be contained in the header.

Please let us know what you want and how you know that it is possible :-))

Ronald
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ASKER

i want to get the ip from an email address i put in eg;
input me@me.me output 214.567.56.865 so i can tell if my friends are online i know it can be done Because msn messenger does it and i rember seeing an artical about it some where !
I don't know how MSN-messenger works but it MAY have some access to server-side data (i.e. information provided by the Internet provider (MSN?))

Here's a VERY simple reason why this CANNOT work in general and for arbitrary e-mail adresses:

I have just ONE e-mail address, but a different IP every day. Now if you say the e-mail provider should know: No way, they don't even know if I'm online.

Stuff like that can only work for e-mail addresses maintained by the internet providers, but never for stuff like POP3-servers or webmail...
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ASKER

so do you mean that if i get the ip from some1 called me@aol.com or me@freeserve.com the ip wont change?
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
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Ronald112197
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ASKER

ok thanks 4 your time
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ASKER

i know now how to instant messaging and the online detection thing works your computer uses a function and a server called ICQ or 'I Seek You' look at this page for more info
http://www.howstuffworks.com/instant-messaging2.htm
Avatar of Eddie Shipman
mgazza,
  The way the messenger clients do it is that they check the messenger server to determine
if the user is logged in and reads the logged-in IP address from the messenger server's
database. They only use the email address to determine the user.
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ASKER

hey,
 thanks man i though it could b done like that this question was posted along time ago i have since made a chat app and when i get round to it ill make a thing that loads a data bace from my ftp server :D