Short answer, no the IP number (DNS is irrelevant) will not bee seen in the headers.

Yes it can easily be traced via Google's access logs. That would take a court order. In other words the email is anonymous unless it's breaking the law.

For the really paranoid, connect to gmail via an anonymous proxy.

Just to agree with mr hat, I just sent myself an e-mail from gmail and there's no identifing information in the headers there.

As someone who's been an e-mail administrator for a number of years I think that's kind of a shame. It's amazing how often creepy blokes (and it usually is blokes) use Hotmail accounts to harass women (yes, always women) on their work addresses. Many times I've looked at the header and been able to identify where it's come from - starangely enough it's always the creeps place of work. From there it just requires a carefully worded e-mail from the harassee to the harasser and they shut up.

And here's something to bear in mind: very often when people get nasty-grams e-mailed to them they delete them in disgust. Don't - that information could be useful in tracking the perpertrator, and you may need it if, god forbid, the problem escalates.

Uh, not that jan's friend is doing anything nasty of course.

Thanks. I knew you guys would have the answer. And no, dodge, it's not for anything nasty (or illegal), just something that needs to be anonymous.

In that case, set up a new account, use it only for the one message and be done with it.

That's the intention, warbaby, except it has to be done by someone in the US, so it has a @gmail.com ending instead of the lame @googlemail.com ending that we've been forced to adopt here.

If you were surfing via an anonymous proxy, you wouldn't have a problem.

Ah, but I have absolutely no idea what an anonymous proxy is, which is about the level of my technical knowledge.