Can work trace yahoo emails ?

duchy

stephenliverpool1 wrote: »

Hi,

She has used her private yahoo email account, which she accessed whilst at home, to express views on her line manager anonymously.

Can they trace this back to her home IP address ?

I hope it makes sense now. She won't do it in future. She has been silly TBH.

But if they "weren't rude or offensive" as you said in your first email - what is the issue ?
Ah just seen she sent anonymous emails to her manager telling him he wasn't doing a good job. Only she wasn't smart enough to make them genuinely anonymous - and now she's going to try to pretend it wasn't her by lying ! Got it.

Sounds like her manager found them both rude and offensive - not to mention a bit cowardly if she hadn't got the balls to tell them what she thought to their face.

Has she had this job for less than 2 years by any chance ?
I think she has marked her card and regardless of proving it or not they'll get rid of her at the first chance they get . No one wants to employ someone who sends spiteful anonymous letters .

paddyrg

To answer the question -

Yes, they *may* be able to tell her IP address. They then *may* be able to track it down via the ISP, although it may require subpoenas. There are also other ways they could (for instance) reply to her with an email which on reading (depending on webmail settings) would get the IP address and some other details.

More likely they could track her down through wider use of the email address/account. if her address is sillysausage1995@yahoo.com, they may find other sites with a user account sillasausage1995 and start drawing threads together.

onomatopoeia99

paddyrg wrote: »

Yes, they *may* be able to tell her IP address. They then *may* be able to track it down via the ISP, although it may require subpoenas.

Obtaining a Norwich Pharmacal order from a court would be required to force the ISP to disclose customer details. It can be sought for the pursuit of damages following a tort as I understand it, as well as by those investigating a potential crime (including, but not limited to, the police - the original was granted to customs and excise rather than the police).

It is unlikely a court would grant one to narked line manager. That doesn't mean the OP's friend hasn't been stupid, nor that they can't be tracked down by other means as you suggested though.

Andypandyboy

It would be easy to ask around to see if anyone else at work knows whose the email address is. Is it on FB? If she uses it regularly then someone will know it, unless she made a new one for the purpose.

Malmo

There are dozens of reverse email lookup services available, both free or paid, which could be utilised to find the profile of someone. Examples are pipl & spokeo.

Strider590

stephenliverpool1 wrote: »

Hi,

She has used her private yahoo email account, which she accessed whilst at home, to express views on her line manager anonymously.

Can they trace this back to her home IP address ?

I hope it makes sense now. She won't do it in future. She has been silly TBH.

They can't obtain a persons address from an IP address without a court order against the ISP and that is extremely unlikely to occur for something this trivial.

Even the multi-billion $ film/music corporations can't trace peoples IP addresses without huge legal expense.

They will probably just try to baffle/scare her into admitting something.

So deny all knowledge, keep the lie as close to the truth as possible but admit nothing.

If cornered she should turn this on it's head and say something about how only a dysfunctional environment or an unfair/biased grievance procedure would lead to an employee having to resort to sending anonymous emails about a manager/supervisor or colleague........ And then ask "are you suggesting this is the case?"



Oh and record any "conversations" on a mobile device for evidence, there's a great app for android called "Smart voice recorder" by Smartmob.

In future, she should not be so silly.
Gossip is not the way to handle things, it does not change anything, it just gives people a chance to betray you (and they will). Work colleagues are not friends, they are always out for number 1 and even if they hate their boss, they will betray you for brownie points.



Why am I saying all this?
Because I hate bosses that abuse power and treat their employees like dirt.

Fightsback

Moral of story, use an anonymous email service through Tor.

Jivesinger

Sometimes the name of the sending computer is also contained within an email header.

For instance if your friend's name was Jane, and the name of that computer was 'JanesLaptop' or similar, then that might be a potential identifier.

macman

Unless this is an additional email account that she keeps purely for sending anonymous emails from, then it seems likely that at some point she's sent an email from her home email address to work, not necessarily to the line manager in question but someone else. So they'll be a match somewhere in the system.
All depends how vexed the manager is, what resources they have, and how far they want to take it. It seems clear that they have already decided who the culprit is, now they are simply seeking the evidence to prove it.

Strider590

macman wrote: »

Unless this is an additional email account that she keeps purely for sending anonymous emails from, then it seems likely that at some point she's sent an email from her home email address to work, not necessarily to the line manager in question but someone else. So they'll be a match somewhere in the system.
All depends how vexed the manager is, what resources they have, and how far they want to take it. It seems clear that they have already decided who the culprit is, now they are simply seeking the evidence to prove it.

They can't prove it, additional to what I said above, emails can also be spoofed.