They may know you strictly from things they've found on the internet, considering how much personal information "leaks" out onto the net these days (often indirectly -- you may be diligent about what you put out there, but you have no control over what your friends and family and co-workers stick on Facebook, etc). This might be someone you've never met and doesn't live near you, but you've simply flipped some switch in their fevered brain by some relatively innocuous comment you've made on a site somewhere. I mean, mentally healthy people simply don't engage in vicious email harassment, so it's quite likely that whatever you did to get on this person's had side is something rather minor.
redavni wrote:Reply back with a subtle image or a link to a web server where you have full access to the logs. You can set up a web server on your home machine to do it even. If the senders email client is configured to load images automatically, all he needs to do is open it and you have his IP address as long as he is not behind a proxy. A geolocation lookup on the IP should give approximate location.
Yes, the "web bug" trick. This is why most modern email clients, and most webmail clients, now don't load images by default in mail from unknown senders and require you to explicitly click something to view them. For this reason, it would probably be better to not try to "hide" the image but instead make it something your harasser would want to see --
Your mail makes me like this:
unahppyface.gif
where that gif is on a server that gives you access to its logs. Though a dumb harasser might just load everything anyway, even if there's just a little "bug" picture in your signature or whatever. You could just buy a minimal hosting account somewhere -- a lot of web hosts are under $5 a month for a basic setup, and most offer a 30 day trial or money-back guarantee, so you could be in and out without any (or minimal) money out of pocket. You wouldn't even need a domain.
HOWEVER: the harassing emails have now stopped. I personally would rather remain in the dark than kick the hornet's nest. Moreover, if this incites a new round of harassment you probably won't get as sympathetic a response from the police this time since things were quiet until you stirred them up again. So I'd keep this little maneuver in your back pocket and only bring it out if the harassment starts again.