Unreliable Internet Dates (please, no wisecracks)

Joel S. Berson Berson at ATT.NET
Wed Dec 20 17:25:24 UTC 2006


Jon, I think the Date header in email is the date obtained by the
sender's email application from the sender's machine's date.  (In my
morning I get tomorrow's mail from Australia because it is a half day
ahead of me.)  So the "1995" may be simply the year Michael's machine
thought it was.  (One can change the machine's date in Windows via
Date and Time Properties.)

What date(s) do the routing headers give?  Open the message and
expand the message headers to show all headers (it's Blah Blah Blah
in Eudora), and look at the Received headers.

If this isn't the case, I too would be puzzled.

Joel

At 12/20/2006 11:24 AM, you wrote:
>OK, I'm cleaning out my Inbox and I see a post from Michael McKernan
>about "duck tape."
>
>   It's dated "July 25, 1995."
>
>   The actual date is 2005, which, fortunately, is correct in the Archives.
>
>   Does this mean all Internet dates are unreliable (please, no
> wisecracks) ? Or is e-mail a special case ?
>
>   JL
>
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