Can anyone please give any tutorial sites or easy to understand information which will help me to understand and learn how to read full headers in layman's language.

I read a full header and a lot of it is simply double dutch to me.

What I would like to discover is how easy or difficult it is to trace the actual originators of spam/phisher emails.

I have read some online tutorials but they tend to be complicated to the uninitiated.

Thanks.

Poseidon

This FAQ (http://digital.net/~gandalf/spamfaq.html) is quite good.

I wouldn't put much hope into being able to trace where the spam comes from though. They could quite easily be sent from an internet café, zombie PC etc. Also once you get an IP address, that's not much good as you would need the help of the ISP to get their customers details and they don't give that kind of information out.

To add to what Theo said, a lot of spam is sent through unsuspecting relays these days. What that means is that many of the new viruses that have come out are solely for the purpose of turning the infected PC into a spamming machine that the hacker can control. So that 4 million emails of Cialis spam could have come from a network of 150 infected computers. It's gotten to the point that virus writers will gather a list of infected machines (called 'zombies') and sell the services of these machines to spammers.

More here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zombie_network
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/02/17/spam.zombies.ap/

HI,
A couple more things about Spam coming into your email.
Unless you know the person or company, such as buy.com, amazon.com, etc, don't click on any links that say "unsubscribe". It only confirms the email got to you, and you will, most of the time, get "swamped" by the same Spam.
Another thing is that if you order online, don't give your home computer email address, such as the one you use with Outlook or Outlook Express. When you buy anything, the email address you use is either sold or given to many, many others.
Give an email address, such as Yahoo, Hotmail, or some other, that you can simply click on Delete Bulk. It's much easier than filling up your Outlook in your own computer.
Best of luck.