How to Analyze Email Headers for Phishing (Step-by-Step)

Phishing emails look like normal and genuine emails. The sender name feels trusted, the message sounds urgent and the structure of the email looks like it is from a real company. The real truth is wrapped inside an email header. If one understands how to analyze email headers for phishing, one can uncover:

• Real sender
• Route email travelled
• Signs of deception.

In this write-up, we will explain how a company or an individual can protect themselves from email phishing.

Watch How to Analyze Email Headers for Phishing

What an Email Header Contains

Email header is a box of technical metadata that is tied to every email. It contains multiple fields through which an investigator traces the message. The most important fields of an email header include:

These important fields work together to reveal the real path of an email across the internet. This is the start point of how to analyze email headers for phishing.

Why Email Header Analysis Matters

Most phishing emails are developed to fool the human eye. Attackers change:

• Display name.
• Fake domains
• Copy the branding and colors of trusted companies.

But behind all this, a term email header which records the technical journey of an email, and that header becomes much harder to fake and change.

We can think of an email like a car moving from one city to another city. Even if someone repaints the car, the toll booth cameras still record where the car came from and which road it used. The headers of an email act in the same way as they record:

• The servers that handled the email.
• IP address of the sending system.
• Authentication checks.
• Time stamps for the message transfer.

Due to this information, email header analysis acts as the most efficient and reliable way to detect phishing attacks.

How to Analyze Email Headers for Phishing

Learning how to analyze email headers for phishing includes some steps. The process is simple if executed properly. Let’s check out its steps in extreme detail.

Step 1 –  View Full Email Header

Header details remain hidden when an email is viewed on a screen in normal view. To investigate an email, one must open the full header information.
For instance:

• Gmail – Use Show Original.
• Outlook – Use the view and click on the message source.
• Yahoo – Select view raw message.

This information which is raw header data that investigators analyze.

Step 2 – Tracing Email Route

Every email that handles the message inserts a received field to the header. These entries help us analyze the email path across servers.

Note – Investigators analyse these extremely important entries from bottom to top. The lowest entries usually show the original sending server. If the original server does not match the claimed sender’s domain the message may be fraudulent.

Step 3 – Check Sender Authentication

Email systems today use authentication technologies in a very strong way to confirm legitimate senders. Key checks are as follows;

• SPF (Sender Policy Framework) – This verifies whether the sending server is authorized by the domain or not.
• DKIM (DomainKeys Identified Mail) – This confirms that the content of an email was not changed during its transmission.
• DMARC – This combines SPF and DKIM results to validate the sender.

If the above-mentioned checks fail this means email may be spoofed or malicious. We hope you are getting some clarity on how to analyze email headers for phishing.

Step 4 – Review IP Addresses

Email headers sometimes include multiple IP addresses which represents the servers involved in delivery. Investigators inspect these IP addresses for identification of suspicious patterns, which can be:

• Unknown geographic locations.
• Hosting providers used for spam
• Servers that are not related to the claimed sender organization.

Tracing of IP addresses helps in determining the true source of the email. This step is very important in the process of how to analyze email headers for phishing.

Step 5 – Inspection of URLs and Embedded Links

Phishing emails contain links that direct users to fake login pages. The role of an investigator is to extract all URLs from the message and inspect them carefully. Common red flags include.

• Domains that copy legitimate brands.
• Long URLs are designed to hide the real domain name.
• Links leading to newly registered websites.

Checking these links without clicking on them helps identify real red flags. With the help of this process, one can understand how to analyze email headers for phishing.

A Smarter Way to Analyze Email Headers

Inspecting and reviewing email headers manually can be difficult if they contain long and technical records. When investigators manage large email datasets, this process becomes slow and extremely complex.

Here, advanced email forensics software for investigations simplifies the process of header analysis and provides a header preview that displays routing details and metadata (learn more).

Investigators can also use IP list preview to quickly identify suspicious sending servers. This tool further supports header analyses across multiple emails and maintains the evidence integrity using MD5 hashing, ensuring data remains reliable for reporting.

Final Thoughts

Phishing emails can look genuine, but headers reveal the real story behind the scenes. Understanding how to analyze email headers for phishing helps investigators trace the origin of email, detect spoofing, and identify malicious links. When the investigation is to be done on a large volume of email data usage of a structured solution makes analyses faster and more reliable.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. How to analyze email headers for phishing in Gmail?
Open the email and click the three-dot menu, select Show Original, and review sender IP, authentication results, and server routes to identify suspicious elements.

Q. What is the most important field in a phishing email header analysis?
The Received field is critical as it shows the actual server path and helps investigators to trace the real email origin point.