Please help me identify what webmail service this came from

November 6, 2011 11:57 AM

E-mail: Is it possible to determine from a message's "User-Agent" what service was used to send an e-mail? If so, please help me identify this one.

I received a message that was stamped, in the header, with: "User-Agent: Web-Based Email 5.6.03."

Is there a way to figure out whether this is Gmail, Squirrel Mail, etc.?

posted by steinsaltz to Technology (7 answers total)

Can you get the e-mail's full header information? There should be an option to show it on most webmail providers, as well as things like Outlook or what have you. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that will contain a lot of detail information about where the e-mail in question came from.
posted by anaximander at 12:11 PM on November 6, 2011

Response by poster: There is, but this isn't so much about where the e-mail came from, as much as how it was sent.

Has to do with a dispute over a restraining order. Someone claims he didn't violate the other party's wishes by sending a harassing message last month...based on the excuse that it was pre-programmed months earlier as a time-release, delayed message he forgot to stop when it went out.

If we can establish it was something like Squirrel Mail, it should prove no such feature exists. But if it was some complicated Eudora client, maybe it has such a thing.
posted by steinsaltz at 12:16 PM on November 6, 2011

It seems that "Web-Based Email 5.6.03" is the name of GoDaddy's webmail. Googling that phrase and looking at the other e-mail headers (specifically, the Received headers, which show which email servers the email passes through) show that the email goes through secureserver.net, which is the domain GoDaddy uses for their DNS and mail services. Does your email show secureserver.net in its Received headers? If so, it's a good chance that it was sent through GoDaddy. But it's probably not a 100% chance, as pretty much any email header can be spoofed.
posted by zsazsa at 12:23 PM on November 6, 2011

Response by poster: Yeah, I should have mentioned, it's definitely a GoDaddy-sent e-mail, through their SecureServer.net. So that's the right trail.
posted by steinsaltz at 12:30 PM on November 6, 2011

Best answer: Assuming the client used was the GoDaddy webmail service, it does provide a feature to schedule email delivery.

Scheduling a Time to Send Email Messages
posted by lucia_engel at 1:03 PM on November 6, 2011 [1 favorite]

Best answer: Has to do with a dispute over a restraining order. Someone claims he didn't violate the other party's wishes by sending a harassing message last month...based on the excuse that it was pre-programmed months earlier as a time-release, delayed message he forgot to stop when it went out.


This seems like it would hold as much water as a utility continuing to bill you after you cancelled your account on the grounds that "we forgot to turn cancel your auto-pay". It seems like the this is a red herring.
posted by tylerkaraszewski at 6:20 PM on November 6, 2011

Best answer: Yeah, I can't imagine the "delayed send" excuse will hold any water against the fact that it was indeed sent. It's their responsibility to control their communications, and a lack of said responsibility in the past would probably factor into whatever harassment drama is going on.
posted by rhizome at 11:45 AM on November 7, 2011 [1 favorite]