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Yahoo Mail Forensics to Analyze Email Header

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Published By Aswin Vijayan
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Approved By Anuraag Singh
Published On October 4th, 2023
Reading Time 5 Minutes Reading
Category Email Forensics

Since technology has marked remarkable changes, so has the approach of the people. With the emergence of web-based email clients and desktop clients, communication has taken a different drive. People share documents, files, images, etc. through these mail clients since the conversation takes place within seconds. You may have come across many web-based clients such as Yahoo, Gmail, etc.

Though these clients are meant for delivery purposes, nowadays it is been misused for criminal activities. Web-based email clients add aid for criminal works, for example; the victim may get emails of blackmailing, communication between the suspects sometimes takes place through emails, and much more.

Because of these, an investigator first observes the emails of the suspects, if any. In other words, it is said that the investigation is incomplete without a random check of the emails.

This session details you about Yahoo Mail clients, and how evidence collection is carried out. The session also describes how to save a copy of Yahoo email folders to perform Yahoo forensics.

Where to Find Evidence by Yahoo Forensics Tool?

While surfing through the browsers, remember that all the details will be stored in some locations. An investigator can find the pages through which the suspects have gone from the history, cache as well as from cookies. Each browser has its own storage folders, where you will find all the search files. Moreover, the point to be noted is that the location differs for different Operating Systems. A trained forensic agent can dig it out easily.

In a similar way, investigators can dig out evidence from email clients. Since we are talking about the Yahoo mail client, let’s check out where an investigator gets the hint for solving the cases.

Checking the email header is the main way to get the evidence. The fields in the header portion will help the investigator to know about the sender, receiver, the path from where the mail came, whether the mail is original or not, and much more.

Yahoo Mail Forensics

Yahoo Email Forensics to View Yahoo Mail Header

In order to view the header part of the email, select the email and then go for the ‘View Full Header’ option from the ‘More’ menu seen at the top.

The header contains a bunch of information such as:

  • Return path- the path to which the mail should be sent if it is not delivered.
  • Message ID- each email will have a unique ID
  • Content type- describes whether the field contains any multimedia messages or not
  • It even contains subject, from, delivered–to, DKIM Signature, etc.

To investigate the suspect’s mail, the investigator should have the email address and will have to log in to it for searching. However, continuous login and out is tedious since it will consume more time. Above all checking on emails also depends on the network. So, if the network is poor, the investigation gets blocked. If the time left out for closing the investigation is less then, it’s better to take a copy of the emails. If all the emails are saved separately investigation speed can be increased. Copy of emails eases the work of forensics.

How can the backup be done? How to save all the emails? How will the copy of Yahoo email folders aid easy Yahoo forensics? One can save the emails one by one and take attachments to the system alone but, the task is a bit lengthy. Saving the email one by one takes time since it may not be one mail in the Inbox. If data is saved, it becomes easier for working with email. Email copy is recommended for easy investigation and can be done with the help of a third party.

Automated Tool to Analyze & Save Yahoo Emails

Backing up bulk Yahoo emails is now possible with the Best Yahoo Backup Software. With the tool, the investigator can back up the Inbox mails, sent emails, chats, trash, etc. along with the attachments to any of the file formats such as PST, EML, MBOX, and MSG. Later, the agent can take it to any supportive desktop clients and search.

Download for Win OS Download for Mac OS

The tool even enables the user to delete all the emails from the server once if it is downloaded, if needed. Apart from that, users can specify the time intervals for downloading.

The users get the choice to filter the contents to be downloaded. For that, you will have to check the appropriate items. Once when the downloading is done it becomes easier the transferring the emails to the colleague investigator.

Summing Up

Email investigation has become important now since many communications are been carried out with its help. If you take any one criminal case, an email contribution will be seen. Yahoo’s forensics tool allows experts to back up Yahoo email folders for investigation. Investigators can share the emails with one another easily and can even store them in their local storage for future needs if needed. Moreover, the chance of missing the email will be removed to an extent.