MSN Trace?

[[GSV]Trig]

Is it possible to trace someone via msn, it would appear that someone has gotten hold of my g/f's sisters old email address.
She used to go under the email grace, well for the last 3 weeks someone on MSN has been using the same email address and talking to Grace (10) and her other school friends, all of the same age range.
We challenged this other person on MSN lastnite and there responces lead us to belive that this person is much older than the 10 year old girl there pretending to be.
Whoever it is has been talking via MSN to a lot of Grace's friends and has even told then that (she?) has the same middle name, now I'm not sure how many people have that exact name but lets just say that that plus the responces we were getting has prompted us to contact the school and the police, the school were fine, as were one of Grace's friend parents, the police however seem to think it was a complaint and told us to report it to some internet watchdog instead...

Anyways, is it possible to trace someone your talking to on MSN or by there email's?
is the address so if it can be traced, netstat while talking to them on MSN? dunno but whoever it is has blocked us now so we cant see or talk to them..

[Moby-Dick]

Not really...net stat woudl only show a connection to MSN's servers AFAIK.
You might get an IP from a file transfer session or webcam where a more direct connection is made between the two chatters.

Otherwise you'd be better off reporting it to MSN themselves - Its somethign I'd imagine they might take quite seriously.

[[GSV]Trig]

Well we cant talk to them anymore, guessing they blocked us or somethin lol...

[htid]

Get someone to email them, saying something like "is this the Grace i used to go to school with etc etc" and maybe they will reply and give something away....i'll do it if you want, just ask.

[Swafe]

Back in the day, used to work anyway.

Send a file, when they accept its a direct connection, so then you can netstat out an IP address. Of course, if your blocked that wont work, so try and say sorry for challenging them just that your parents were concerned, say its a photo of yourself and you want them to have a look or something to tempt them into accepting and just send a big blank bitmap so you get time to get their IP.

Once you have their IP Im not sure what you can do, but the police can definutly find out what ISP there on from the first couple of numbers, and then from the rest the ISP can tell you who that person is.

[Mike Fishcake]

Back in the day, used to work anyway.

Send a file, when they accept its a direct connection, so then you can netstat out an IP address.

Yeah, I've done that before to catch someone out

[XA04]

Best thing to do is to setup a PHP script, to record IP's that go to the page.

Then give the page to the person on MSN saying it's pictures of her and friends - they are definitely going to click it then, and you have their IP (providing they aren't using a proxy).

One step closer though. Record the time and date too.

[5lab]

register a complaint to msn, i'd imagine they're quite concerned about stuff like this

[XA04]

MSN probably won't do anything - if the police, or lawyer (or somebody with power) contacted them, then I think they would.

[richard-wong]

i used to use a software called Netlimiter which shows the destination IP of a file transfer in MSN, so maybe u can trace ip from there good luck

[Norky]

I'd go with the PHP script idea, gimme a PM if you'd like me to set a link up

[TheAnimus]

indeed if you can trick them into accepting a transfer and it DOSEN'T have to go via the servers (because of NAT or something) then a simple

start -> run -> cmd -> netstat

will give you the IP.

but seriously, there are always going to be people "trawling" for kids on the net, educating the kids is a better solution, enless you can enact a more final solution on the source.

[[GSV]Trig]

netstat doesnt work anymore...

[hitman67]

Possibly easier, you could lure him onto a forum (Create a free one on IF) and if you have admin rights it'll show you the IP of Guests.

[XA04]

Or just use my PHP idea, which is a lot quicker, and easier.

[XA04]

I'll make it easier for you too (quickly wrote this up):

<?php
$REMOTE_ADDR = getenv('REMOTE_ADDR'); 
$body_content="$REMOTE_ADDR"; 
$file_name="file.txt";
$fp = fopen ($file_name, "w"); 
fwrite ($fp,$body_content);
fclose ($fp);
?>

Make a file called file.txt and chmod it to 777.

Get somebody to visit the page and tada - their IP will be recorded to file.txt


Probably a good idea to Google some pictures and add them to the page too (to make it look less dodgy... or more, you could look at it either way).

Edit: Btw, it won't keep updating it will just show the one IP address at a time, so if you view the PHP file after it will then be updated with your IP address..I will change it if it bothers you.