Is There A Way To Hide A Domain Name In Email Message Headers/Source Code. ?

[tickmike]

Is There A Way To Hide A Domain Name In A Private Email ( not the firms Emails ! ) Message Headers/Source Code. ?

 

My daughter has started a new job and gets free accommodation with it and free internet which is run off the sites main domain server on a separate .net LAN which I would think does admin offices and shops and other staff accommodation etc.

 

On a test private email she sent me to our home, looking at a email message header/source code I can see one section says

 

' Received: from localhost.localdomain (mail.domain name of firm.net. [xxx.xx.xxx.188]) ' >>>>>Name of firm and it's IP address removed !<<<<<

 

It looks like this internet facing IP address for the firm has rDNS, using 'Whois' gives the location etc.

 

It's telling the world (if you know how to view an email header !) where she works and worse still where she lives, which nowadays for a young lady living alone is not a good idea.

 

A email test using a web mail Does not show the firms name or IP address eg Gmail, she uses 'Thunderbird' mail browser on a 'PCLinuxOS' run Laptop.

 

The flat is served by a (locked) WiFi access point from the local LAN .

 

If I set her a separate access point / LAN for her flat could it be configured to hide the firms name on the emails sent ?.

[FN-GM]

If she connected via a VPN it would hide that information.

[elsiegee40]

Isn't it simpler for her to deal with email using her phone?

[tickmike]

If she connected via a VPN it would hide that information.

I think the use of unauthorized VPN are not permitted !.

 

A VPN to where ?

Edited October 24, 2016 by tickmike

[tickmike]

Isn't it simpler for her to deal with email using her phone?

You can still view email headers on iphone which she uses.

[elsiegee40]

You can still view email headers on iphone which she uses.

 

Yes, but if she keeps it off the wifi when replying then the headers won't link to her location. A mifi would achieve the same thing.

 

Personally, as the mother of a 23 year old daughter who has done the university thing and coped with her residence in both Tanzania and Canada for 3 month periods in the last 12 months, I do understand your concerns for your daughter but think this sounds more than a little over-cautious of you. With my eSafety trainer hat on, I suspect email headers are the least of her privacy problems whatever you may think. However, I am not you and our daughters are not the same person either so I simply propose using mifi or her phone isp for email.

 

MOD NOTE: Suggestions that bypass the network settings put in place by the employer/residence management may not be discussed here in accordance with EduGeek rules.

Edited October 24, 2016 by elsiegee40

[ZeroHour]

It sounds like she is using their email server to send email out. Just to clarify, when you say personal email is that a 3rd party email company such as Gmail and it's showing those as coming from xcompany rather than the 3rd party?

If so she needs to configure her mail client to send out via the 3rd party companies servers rather than xcompany when she sends from her personal account. Her work email address will always show her sending server as xcompany as it's their email service but Gmail for example has a SMTP server she can send through which would remove xcompany.

[MrKJLS]

Use a different computer on a personal hotspot or use a different email account like outlook or gmail and use the web client?

[computer_expert]

I use postfix to strip out internal server names from headers, however, the postfix server is the last hop before emails hit my email provider.

 

If the headers are added by an upstream server (after it leaves postfix) then I'm not sure how you'd get around this, other than using webmail.

[tickmike]

Thanks for feedback.

 

@ elsiegee40 PM Sent .

 

The facts as I know them, while I was visiting her last week I looked at her laptop network settings, using DHCP to the firms LAN IP = 10.255.156.223, Gateway of 10.255.156.1 DNS 10.255.156.2 Netmask 255.255.255.0

 

I could see there feed comes through a 'pfsence' Hardware Firewall.

 

Checking her laptops Network IP address / Gateway and DNS settings I noticed the DNS and Gateway where different and it looks like it's DNS server is the the mail server for this firm !

 

I did try to view the Gateway IP address in a web browser and it seems to bring a 'ThisFirm's web page up.

 

I then did the same with the DNS IP address and got a 'login' page for there internal mail server

 

It looks like there server has lots of services running on the same server, DNS, email hosting etc... and all using the same external IP address, as they use different ports .

 

It is the external IP address has an rdns of mail,thisfirm.url

 

 

The website for the firm and all there Ethernet LAN is handled via another IT. .

 

I can access the laptop via 'Teamviewer' from home to do maintenance .

 

Because our home ISP = Eclipse (Kcom) she cannot use there SMTP mail servers on port 25 as she does at home, I have set it up to use SMTP.gmail.com port 587 for the outgoing mail server, this has worked well while she was at uni and other courses for the last 5 years.

 

 

On her laptop I have an automatic back up system (using 'Luckybackup') to my server at home and that sends me an email using 'sendEmail' via the command line (Linux Terminal ), looking at one of them at the headers/source code I can also see the rDNS company name on that as well.

 

re. 'I would use postfix to strip out internal server names from headers' not sure what post fix is. !.

Edited October 24, 2016 by tickmike