See who really is posting in newsgroups with Outlook Express

To see the header of a news post/message in Outlook Express:

  1. Open the news post
  2. In the menu select “File” -> “Properties”
  3. Select the fan “Details”
  4. Now you will see the header for the message

Another way is to open the news post and press CTRL+F3, and it will show the source for the news post.

In the header the following can be seen: - X-Trace : The domain and ip for who has been posting.

  • X-Newsreader : The program used for posting.
  • X-Complaints-To : The email address to complain to if the person is abusing.
  • NNTP-Posting-Host : The domain of newsserver, where the message was originally posted. This is usually the persons Internet Server Provider(ISP).

Note the CTRL+F3 in Outlook Express can also be used for e-mails, where it will display the long mail header. The mail header contains among other things the list of SMTP servers the mail had to travel through to reach destination, and what time it happened. This can be useful to diagnose what SMTP server that might have delayed the arrival of the email. To see the long mail header in Outlook 98/2002/2003 open the mail item, and in the View-menu select Options… and it will open a dialog that contains the long mail header.