What is "RECEIVED"? -- really

[Jerry]

I'm using the FM web mail interface. On the MAILBOX screen, there is a column labeled "RECEIVED \ /". Often, I notice that the "newest" message is dated sometime in the future. For example, today (4 AUG), the newest message in my INBOX was "received" on "8 AUG 4:43".

Messages that have these "projected" dates are always spam, so I expect this is being done purposely to keep the spam at the top of the sorted list for a few days.

So, what is the RECEIVED column REALLY displaying? It's obviously NOT the time the message was really RECEIVED at the FastMail servers. Is this the time the message was SENT by the SENDER, the time stamp being provided by the sender's computer clock (which could easily be set to a future date)?

[kurianja]

Originally posted by Jerry
Messages that have these "projected" dates are always spam, so I expect this is being done purposely to keep the spam at the top of the sorted list for a few days.

These appear at the top as the mails are sorted by date. That's the only thing done purposely here.

So, what is the RECEIVED column REALLY displaying? It's obviously NOT the time the message was really RECEIVED at the FastMail servers. Is this the time the message was SENT by the SENDER, the time stamp being provided by the sender's computer clock (which could easily be set to a future date)?

You are right. That's why you get date set in the future.

[LrdVader]

I know that, at some point in the future, there are plans to make this actually show the time the message was received. In the mean time, though, the column heading is inaccurate. Until this is changed, have you guys considered simply changing the column name to "Date", so it won't be claiming to be something it isn't?

[zunstone]

ah....okay....that explains:
http://sunstone.myfastmail.com/Futuremail.GIF

[robmueller]

Changing it to just "Date" is a good idea.

If you remember, the whole Received vs Sent thing is mostly to deal with email pulled via POP. If we showed the real received date, it would show the date the email was downloaded from the POP server...

Now I know you'll say, "Why not for POP'ed emails, set the received date to the sent date (eg Date: header in the email)?" A nice idea, but not easy to implement because the imap received date is set internally during the LMTP delivery stage and cannot currently be overridden (though I'm sure with a bit of work, you could create a patch to do this...)

Rob

[Jerry]

Thanks for the explanations, guys. And, Kurianja, I didn't mean to imply that FM was doing anything to keep the spams at the top of the list . . .

I should have said:
"I expect the spammers are doing this purposely . . ."

Jerry

[trond]

At Runbox, we have the opposite problem. We show the date the message was received (and we call it "date") in the list. For regular mail, this is good enough, but it's a real pain with mail the users retrieve by POP from other accounts. Particularly if they fetch all mail from their old account this way. We also feed POP retrieved mail through the same system that regular mail goes through, so it's hard to distinguish between the two.

The problem with using the date from the Date: header is pretty much what you've discovered here. It is often completely wrong.
Spam is probably the most common source of mails with futuristic dates, but I regularly get mail from friends with the date set a couple of years in the future, or past, or where the time could have been correct if they had been using the correct timezone.

I think the best thing is to keep both dates. Sort by received date at default, and sort by the date header when the user clicks on the date column. And let it be overridable in preferences.

[anj]

Originally posted by robmueller
Changing it to just "Date" is a good idea.

Simple is good sometimes.

[LrdVader]

I agree with trond that having the option is nice. I used to use The Bat as my client, and it actually had both Sent and Received columns available. It isn't necessary, IMO, to actually display both columns, as The Bat does, but being about to choose *which* date to display and sort on, perhaps on a per-folder basis, makes sense.

[Sherry]

Personally I really like it when it shows the date the sender sent it. If it shows Aug 3 and just arrives on Aug 5, I know it got lost somewhere out there and can reply letting the sender know I just got it and wasn't ignoring them. (hotmail mail does get hung up out there a lot)

Sherry

[trond]

Originally posted by Sherry
Personally I really like it when it shows the date the sender sent it.

Sure, but that's not necessarily what it means. That depends completely on the mail client the sender uses. Several mail clients will use the time the user started writing the message as the date header. Others (and this is probably the most common) will set the date when the user hits send. But - Even then it can be several hours off from the real sending time. If the user is using a
dial-up connection to the internet, the date will (normally) be set when the user "sends" the message to his outbox. But it can sit there for days until the next time the user actually connects to the internet.

The only way to know if there actually was a delay, and where it occured, is to take a look at the received headers in the mail. They're added by the mailservers that the messages passes through. They're normally correct (but many spammers will attempt to fake them as well), but there's no standard format of these headers, so it's best to leave the interpretation of them to humans

[Sherry]

Thanks for the response. I think, for me, most I know that are on dial-up get logged in, read/reply and send. They then disconnect when they are through. Guess that's a good reason to have it be a choice.

Sherry

[bitequator]

Originally posted by trond
The only way to know if there actually was a delay, and where it occured, is to take a look at the received headers in the mail. They're added by the mailservers that the messages passes through. They're normally correct (but many spammers will attempt to fake them as well), but there's no standard format of these headers, so it's best to leave the interpretation of them to humans

On that note I wish all (legitimate) MTAs use atomically-synced clocks so everything match up to within fraction of a second at any point in time. For example I often see MailSnare's and FM's Received header timestamping (on the same email forwarded between them) differing by many seconds (minutes?), where the latter server has an earlier timestamp for example -- I think it might be MailSnare's clock that's a bit off...

P.S. Changing the FM "Date" column label is a good idea I agree

[zunstone]

Originally posted by trond
... but I regularly get mail from friends with the date set a couple of years in the future, or past

in the past ? Then the mail would not be displayed on the inbox (regularly sorted by received) ?Right ?
Uh, this is scary...

[Sherry]

Originally posted by zunstone
in the past ? Then the mail would not be displayed on the inbox (regularly sorted by received) ?Right ?
Uh, this is scary...

I don't think you would miss the message. Unread messages show a bold count next to each folder that has an unread message so, after reading all your mail, you'd still have 1 with the bold telling you a message is still unread. (you could do a search for unread messages to find it quickly)

Sherry