Open Bug 73565 Opened 23 years ago Updated 5 months ago

Messages that lack a Date: header are displayed as "sent in 1969/12/31"(or 1970/01/01, Epoc time)

Categories

(MailNews Core :: Backend, defect)

Product:
MailNews Core
Component:
Backend
Type:
defect

Tracking

(Not tracked)

People

(Reporter: benc, Unassigned)

References

(Depends on 1 open bug)

Details

(Whiteboard: See 209501 if you have a bogus message with no content and dated 1969/1970 - it's another bug.)

Attachments

(1 file)

peter's screen snapshot
57.26 KB, image/jpeg
Details 
I need to look at the standards, but my recollection is messages sent without a
date are illegal.

However, it seems that Netscape Messaging Server 4.1p3 has seen fit to send me
some alerts without a date.

Netscape displays it as: 12/31/69 in the mailbox display.

Here's the text when I view source:

From - Mon Mar 26 23:57:03 2001
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
Return-Path: <Postmaster@localhost> Received: from frame.packetgram.com
([127.0.0.1]) by
          frame.packetgram.com (Netscape Messaging Server 4.15) with SMTP
          id GAM86900.406 for <Postmaster@localhost>; Thu, 22 Mar 2001
          12:13:21 -0800
From: Postmaster@localhost
To: Postmaster@localhost
Subject: ALARM: server response time in seconds of "http" is 10
Precedence: list
Resent-From: postmaster@packetgram.com

Server instance: /usr/netscape/server4/msg-frame
Alarmid: serverresponse
Instance: http
Description: server response time in seconds
Current measured value (22/Mar/2001:12:13:21 -0800): 10
Lowest recorded value: 10
Highest recorded value: 10
Monitoring interval: 600 seconds
Alarm condition is when over threshold of 10
Number of times over threshold: 1

Netscape 4 seems to display this message with another incorrect time, but with
the date of today.

This came from an IMAP account, so I should poke around and see if IMAP stores
an arrival date somewhere...
*** Bug 73614 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; 0.8.1), imap server

I get a different wrong date: Several mails dated 01.01.70 without subject or
sender in inbox appearded yesterday. I cannot delete them. All is fine when
using Milestone0.8.

I changed the summary a bit to clarify what is going on. 
Peter, can you paste in the headers to the messages you have that show up in
"1970"? 

"Date:" is a required line: (RFC822) The Date: header specifies the date and
time that the mail message was originally sent. All mail messages must include
this header line. (per the O'Reilly sendmail book)... 

I've also looked at how Communicator 4 handled this in IMAP, and it takes all
the date-less messages and displays them as having arrived date/time of mailbox
opening (i.e, it changes forward everytime you open the mailbox). I guess I need
to file a bug against the iPlanet/Netscape mailserver too, for sending this out
in the first place.
I have a jpg showing the subject lines, but I cannot submit any attachments
(operation times out) :(
Attached image peter's screen snapshot — 

    
    

    
  
Strangely, this only happens at work (winNT), but not at home (win98) - both are
build 2001-04-03.

    
    

    
  
BTW, in the screenshot above (2001-04-03), *ALL* the messages in the screenshot
CANNOT be deleted :(

    
    

    
  
This occurs on Mac OS X build 2001090105 too. Messages without Date headers show
up as 12/31/1969, i.e. 1/1/1970 - 1.

    
    

    
  
This happens on Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; WinNT4.0; en-US; rv:0.9.3+)
Gecko/20010903 although there is no problem deleting the emails.

A missing Date: header being Illegal or not, showing the unix epoch as the date
is stupid.  Please can you show the date that the message was *received*
instead?  This makes more sense.  This date should be available from the IMAP
server.  I get these problem emails from a buggy virus scanning engine and I
don't have access to fix their broken code, though I will ask them to fix it.


    
    

    
  
*** Bug 95265 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
See also bug 105120, which is a crasher when viewing the source of these types
of messages.

    
    

    
  
Related: bug 96165

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 96165 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
I have the same problem for some emails sent on a UNIX system, I think it is
because of the date format these mails use:

The line in message source: "Date: Fri, 26 Oct 101 06:42:04 -0700 (PDT)"
The line in message list shown by mozilla: "1969-12-31 16:00"
    (I use YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm date time format in Windows 2000)
The line in message header shown by mozilla: "Date: 26750-03-17 13:47"

BTW, Outlook Express shows the date correctly.

Mozilla 0.9.6 (Build ID: 2001112009), Windows 2000 SP2


    
    

    
  
Is anyone still working on this?

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 141626 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
This occurs on all platforms.
Keywords: mozilla1.2, 
          
            nsbeta1
OS: other → All
Hardware: PC → All

    
    

    
  
We should take the date out of the top received line, or just index it using the
date when it is first touched on the server.

I'm using mail.app (bundled w/ mac os x), and it works fine.

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 132779 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 168606 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 177920 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
See also bug 32216.

    
  
Keywords: mozilla1.2 → mozilla1.3

    
    

    
  
I have had the same kind of "mystery email message" with no sender, no body,
just a 12/31/69 message date.  It is not deletable, and reappears out of the
trash folder if you delete it from your inbox.  My whole browser is now freezing
when replying to other email messages from legitimate senders.  I have to use
Task Manager and end the Mozilla Mail task, which closes the browser down as
well.  I have Mozilla 1.3a, but it began last time with the milestone 1.2
release.  I finally got rid of the mystery email message when this first
happened a while back by changing the importance label, then deleting it, but
all my attempts this time have failed.  

Someone please tell me how to fix this bug and what causes it, so I can stop
this from reoccuring!!!  It is by far the most annoying problem I have had with
Mozilla, and I am fearful of some kind of damage that may be happening by my
continued use of Mozilla with this kind of bug.

Ray Osejo

    
    

    
  
Mail triage team: nsbeta1-
Keywords: nsbeta1-

    
  
Keywords: nsbeta1

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 187451 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 191058 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 191424 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 195583 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
not sure what the RFC says is supposed to happen, but Outlook takes the date 
from the Received: header text....

here's a sample header...

Return-Path: <fipple@foo.rr.com>
Received: from rgmum3.us.fipple.com by rgmum5.us.fipple.com
	with ESMTP id 103814671047599063; Thu, 13 Mar 2003 16:44:23 -0600
Return-Path: <fipple@foo.rr.com>
Received: from dhcp-west.us.fipple.com by rgmum6.us.fipple.com
	with ESMTP id 45649231047599052; Thu, 13 Mar 2003 16:44:12 -0600
MIME-Version: 1.0
From: fipple@foo.rr.com
To: ikjeft01@yahoo.com
Subject: test at 15:43
Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="==__==__A8420XZ382__==__=="



    
    

    
  
That, or simply timestamping when it first views the message seems fine to me.


    
    

    
  
Mozilla 1.3

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; OpenVMS COMPAQ_AlphaServer_DS10_466_MHz; en-US; rv:1.3)
Gecko/20030313

This problem is continuing.  The corrupted messages are not really on the IMAP
server.  Deleting the .msf file only fixes things temporarily.


    
    

    
  
*** Bug 207045 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030529

WinXP

These "empty" email messages are appearing on my system, also. It was moved to
the  Junk mail folder, but now it cannot be deleted. When I delete it, it
appears to be gone, but when I return to the folder it is still there.

Attempting to view the message source just gives a blank window.

The sender and subject are blank and the date shows up as 12/31/1969 7:00 PM

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 221141 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
I see the same problem with 1.5 - I have these mystery emails dated 12/31/1969,
which show as being completely empty when I view source, can't ever be deleted,
and just sit there.

    
    

    
  
To clarify to people that run into this bug when searching for bogus messages:

*This* bug is about "normal" messages, with content and headers, that are sent
*without dates* in the message header. When this happens, we display them with a
bogus date.

There is another -- most probably unrelated -- problem, which is that bogus
messages appear seemingly at random in INBOX. These messages have *no content*,
bogus headers, a 1970/1969 date, and (until recently) could not be deleted.
Bienvenu fixed mailnews so that they can at least be erased in bug 209501, but
the real problem is still not known. If this happens to you and you have a clue
as to why it happened, we're interested in hearing from you -- bug 209501 is
probably the right place since *this* bug discusses another issue.

I'm going to redupe the wrong dupes against 209501 so I can get an idea of when
this sort of problem was reported, so sorry for the spam if you're hit.
Whiteboard: See 209501 if you have a bogus message with no content and dated 1969/1970 - it's another bug.

    
  
Summary: Messages w/o date were "sent in 1969" → Messages that lack a Date: header are displayed as "sent in 1969"

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 209519 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 235624 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
I am now having a blank message show up in my folders.
Date is always 12/31/69
I can click on it an delete and it will go away for a while.  Next day it will
be back there again.

Glenn Palmer

    
    

    
  
(In reply to comment #39)
> I am now having a blank message show up in my folders.
> Date is always 12/31/69
> I can click on it an delete and it will go away for a while.  Next day it will
> be back there again.

Your problem isn't pertinent to this bug.  If you can reproduce your problem in
a clean Thunderbird installation (or perhaps not, I'm not really familiar with
the Thunderbird bug reporting guidelines), file a bug for it -- but don't report
it in an unrelated bug.

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 237117 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***
Product: Browser → Seamonkey

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 249642 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
Add "1970" to summary for ease of search.
Summary: Messages that lack a Date: header are displayed as "sent in 1969" → Messages that lack a Date: header are displayed as "sent in 1969/12/31"(or 1970/01/01, Epoc time)

    
    

    
  
Change Product/Component to Core/MailNews:Backend since mail header related
common issue of Mozilla Mail&News and Thunderbird.
Component: MailNews: Main Mail Window → MailNews: Backend
Product: Mozilla Application Suite → Core

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 274622 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 276940 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
Set next bugs as "Depends on:" of this bug, because these are different requests
to  resolve the problem.

Bug 194585 : EMail Date should be corrected if received mail is dated in the
future !
Bug 216033 : RFE: "Date Received" would be better than incorrect "Date Sent" and
illegible "Order Received"

Bug 266434 : if msg doesn't have a Date: header, we use the time we received the
message

Which is the best solution?

Additional information.
Bug 32216 is malformed Date: header case(set in "Blocks" bug of this bug.)
Depends on: 194585, 216033, 266434

    
    

    
  
IMHO, I'd like to see the following:
- replace current "date" with "date sent" column, hidden by default.
- new "date" field is computed by something like:
   date = min(dateNow, dateSent||dateReceived||dateNow)

This change should be transparent for legal messages.  It would be interesting
to see if this matches outlook, I suppose.

We need to avoid losing information, so that filters can be written to look for
bogus dates.

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 284176 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 287081 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 294840 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
(In reply to comment #36)
> 
> *This* bug is about "normal" messages, with content and headers, that are sent
> *without dates* in the message header. When this happens, we display them with a
> bogus date.

The bogus date/time I get on the mail window front-end is 06/02/01 06:28 rather
than 1969/1970.  The 01 is not 2001 because it always appears at the bottom of
the list if sorted by date, so is some xx01 year in the future.

Is my bug the same as this bug 73565?

My setup: Thunderbird 1.0.2 on Windows 98 system.


    
    

    
  
Note that in thunderbird 1.0.6 this does not happen for POP connections, only
for IMAP connections

    
    

    
  
*** Bug 311898 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***

    
    

    
  
I have noticed that messages sent with the Incredimail plug-in mess up the date
field in the header information of outgoing e-mails (which I then receive via
IMAP). Here the full header information:

From - Sat Oct 15 10:46:31 2005
X-Mozilla-Status: 0001
X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000
Return-Path: <Vila_Sinisa@xxxx.ch>
X-Flags: 0000
Delivered-To: GMX delivery to no_spamming@xxxx.com
Received: (qmail invoked by alias); 14 Oct 2005 18:27:31 -0000
Received: from sp0137.sc1.cp.net (EHLO n007.sc1.cp.net) [64.97.136.137]
  by mx0.gmx.net (mx013) with SMTP; 14 Oct 2005 20:27:31 +0200
Received: from p42400 (81.221.110.65) by n007.sc1.cp.net (7.0.038)
(authenticated as Vila_Sinisa@ntel.ch)
        id 432237B40025A0FC for no_spamming@xxxx.com; Fri, 14 Oct 2005 18:27:29
+0000
MIME-Version: 1.0
Message-Id: <434FF89A.000001.01308@P42400>
Date:
=?iso-8859-1?B?RnJpLCAxNCBPY3QgMjAwNSAyMDoyNzozOCArMDIwMCAoWmVudHJhbGV1cm9w5GlzY2hlIFNvbW1lcnplaXQp?=
Content-Type: Multipart/related;
  type="multipart/alternative";
  boundary="------------Boundary-00=_2M4DQL80000000000000"
X-Mailer: IncrediMail (4502089)
From: "Vila Sinisa" <Vila_Sinisa@xxxx.ch>
References: <434F7A92.8050701@xxxx.com>
To: "No Spamming" <no_spamming@xxxx.com>
Subject: Betreff: Re: Sie haben gewonnen: 390140322 / Strumpfhose
&quot;LADY&quot; Gr. 4 (L)
X-FID: BA285063-5BCE-11D4-AF8D-0050DAC67E11
X-Priority: 3
Disposition-Notification-To: "Vila Sinisa" <Vila_Sinisa@xxxx.ch>
X-Antivirus: avast! (VPS 0541-3, 14.10.2005), Outbound message
X-Antivirus-Status: Clean
X-GMX-Antivirus: 0 (no virus found)
X-GMX-Antispam: 0 (Mail was not recognized as spam)
X-GMX-UID: w509Y25YeSEkf+WgSXQhaXN1IGRvbwD9


And the relevant parts:

Date:
=?iso-8859-1?B?RnJpLCAxNCBPY3QgMjAwNSAyMDoyNzozOCArMDIwMCAoWmVudHJhbGV1cm9w5GlzY2hlIFNvbW1lcnplaXQp?=
X-Mailer: IncrediMail (4502089)

The date displayed is then 01.01.1970 

I am running the newest build 1.6a1 (10051014) of Mozilla Thunderbird on a
Windwos XP SP2 machine with all relevant Patches and Hotfixes. The mail account
is an IMAP account.

Like other people I have noticed that the message is displayed correctly in
Outlook 2003.

- John


    
    

    
  
This bug is candidate for oldest Mozilla bug ever. Has any of the developers
done a single thing about is in 4 years?

    
    

    
  
Bgs: This tipe of compleining does not help. From my experience it is a turn off
for most developers. Their standard reply is: why you don't provide a patch
candidate. I know it is not realistic: if I would be able to do it, I would
write a patch myself. 

BTW, for a candidate for the oldest active bug try bug 915 opened on  1998-09-26
10:33 PDT.

    
    

    
  
At last, David has started to care on this problem in Bug 166254.
Depends on: 166254

    
    

    
  
(In reply to comment #53)
> Note that in thunderbird 1.0.6 this does not happen for POP connections, only
> for IMAP connections

 Yes, I see that too. In 1.5.0.7 the date displayed for POP-account messages which lack a Date: header appears to be the POP download time.

    
    

    
  
Just in case it helps, here is what I am seeing using IMAP:
recieved: field of the header is the following (the only part of the header that contains a date)
from somewhere.com (mail.somewhere.com [9.9.9.9]) by exchange.SOMEWHERE.COM with SMTP (Microsoft Exchange Internet Mail Service Version 5.5.2653.13)	id 38XNCRJ2; Mon, 26 Jul 2004 00:11:12 -0700
I see a date of 12/31/1969 4pm (in pacific standard time)
recomend using current time recieved if there is no date field or the date in the recieved field if it exists.

Thanks

    
    

    
  
mailnews.use_received_date=false(default)/true is added to latest-trunk
nightly, and user can choose mail-date(date in "Date column") from Received:
instead of from Date: header now. This enhancement can be a relief of this
bug's case for some(I think many) users. See Bug 341548 for detail.

    
    

    
  
sorry for the spam.  making bugzilla reflect reality as I'm not working on these bugs.  filter on FOOBARCHEESE to remove these in bulk.
Assignee: sspitzer → nobody

    
    

    
  
I still don't see a consensus as to what the right behavior actually is.  To that end, I assert the following:
1. messages without Date headers in a narrow syntax are not "legal" according to RFC 822 (also note that RFC 1123 altered the date format slightly, perhaps others did, too).
2. there are both legitimate and illegitimate mail sources that emit missing or broken Date headers.
3. Even when legal Date headers are present, accuracy is low as even today relatively few systems have dependable ntp-synced (for instance) time, and mis-administered systems are more the rule than the exception.
4. all serious mail readers must do something sane (e.g. not discard or hide) with messages with missing, broken, or bogus (e.g. future) Date headers (spam-detection is a separable issue, IMHO - I'm talking about message that survive whatever filtering has been done).

Proposed solution:
5. the header parser should supply 0 (epoch time) values for any date headers that are missing or unparsable.
6. display fields that correspond with header fields should not be modified by any hacks to make them "look right".  This does not preclude other fields that are computed from headers using whatever rules make sense.
7. UI components should refrain from displaying Date header values that are not legal - e. g. the messages referenced in this bug should display without any date text at all in the "Date" column (unless the flag in bug 341548 is set), and they'll sort as epoch dates.

Bottom line: if the "Date" column means the value of the RFC 822 Date header, then the Date column should not lie about what is there: displaying the epoch date is just silly and displaying some other date, while well-intentioned, is confusing.

    
    

    
  
The consumer experience problem with the bug is that these emails appear at the bottom of the folder when sorted by time (which seems to be what most users use).  In a folder with large #s of messages, the message is out of sight, but the unread count maintains at 1.

Comment #63 's step 5 will not solve that consumer experience, since the parser will think of the message as having a Date: of 1969/70.  Instead, I'd suggest having the parser supply the Received Date (ie whatever supplies comment #61 's mailnews.use_received_date=true).

I think this can be viewed as consistent with the solution step 6 -- "This does not preclude other fields that are computed from headers using whatever rules make sense."  The folderview columns already don't directly use headers (for instance Sender is From: and specifically not Sender:)

There is already a (hidden) preference to make the Date column not bind with Date:, so my recommendation is it be filled with whatever makes sense -- in this case, the Received: Date


    
    

    
  
Whether Date is or is not required is not relevant since some servers simply do not always supply it. Readers still want to know when a message was received or sent.

Consistent with comment #64, the new Microsoft Windows Mail now heads the column as "Received" rather than "Date." This clearly reflects the date and time the message was received. The reader should be able to look at the header details to find more information about actual dates and times.


    
    

    
  
Re: comment #64 - I disagree: there are two oft-conflated issues here:
1. the Date header is often missing or wrong but thunderbird and other mozilla mail components expect it to be correct and useful.
2. the default UI behavior is to sort email by the Date header.

IMHO, the first is fully addressed by commend #63, the second has yet to be addressed properly, though the hidden preference is a valiant (but flawed) attempt to implement a workaround.

If I were king, I'd ignore the Date header (IMHO, a complete waste of bandwidth), and make "Date" a first-class always computed column meaning the (visible preference specified) choice between "Best guess at Sent time" and "Best guess at Received time"...  Or better yet, make the "Date" column go away altogether and let the two "best guess at" datapoints first-class columns.

    
    

    
  
People want the "Date" displayed in the header of their email, and they like to sort by Date too. Some mailers go so far as to display one and sort by the other value (a.k.a SquirelMail's "Sort by Received Date:").

The problem here is: what do you do when the Date header is missing? The rest of the issues should be debated elsewhere.



    
    

    
  
I agree.  It's a pain when emails (usually spams) appear at the "old" end of the mailbox when sorted by "sent" date because the date header is either missing or just wrong.  Sorting by received date makes so much more sense, and it doesn't really matter if the local time on the pc isn't quite right.  The same applies to emails with a date in the future, which is clearly impossible in reality.

Emails with no date header should not have the unix epoch date added as it makes no sense as they were obviously not sent in 1969/70

In summary: I suggest we should be able to sort by "received", and emails without a date header should simply display a blank date.


    
    

    
  
I agree 100% with comment #69. It's clearly what I want as a (long-time) user.


    
    

    
  
My Thunderbird email is getting screwed up so that the Junk filter doesn't work anymore, nor does the counter of Junk and Trash messages that are in the folders. I think it's all because of an email that has the date and time (12/31/1969 5:00 PM). There's no message or subject, only that date and time. Sometimes it  mysteriously shows up in my Inbox and duplicates emails that I try to open. The more I click on the one I want to open the more duplicates of it I get. Then when I delete the one with the date, all of the others I clicked vanish. This thing is giving me fits. It seems invincible. The thing has been living in my Junk folder for a year or so. When I send it to the Trash folder it goes there, but when I open the Junk folder it's back. ARRRRGGGGGHHHHHH! Someone help me!

    
    

    
  
Filter on "Nobody_NScomTLD_20080620"
QA Contact: esther → backend
Product: Core → MailNews Core

    
    

    
  
Issue still occuring as of TB 3.1.6

Email without Date: in header is set to now() time. Should use Delivery-date:

This is a common issue with automated emails from websites and the like and has been ongoing for 10YEARS !!! come on !! seriously !!!

    
    

    
  
Ben, it's 13 years now.

Is this bug being worked on?

Also can somebody please fix the title?

The bug for me is that email messages without a Date header get the now() time instead of having it extrapolated from the Received header

I know it sounds more like a feature request for illegal email messages, but nonetheless I keep seeing messages from these non-compliant senders that appear as if they were sent just now

    
    

    
  
Same problem here with v.31.1.2, released: September 24, 2014

    
    

    
  
I'm seeing the same issue as comment #75.  For me, the biggest culprit is etrade.com.  For now, I'm going to use a procmail recipe to add the missing Date header, but this is something that really should be fixed by Seamonkey, since not everyone can use procmail.

    
  
Severity: normal → S3

    
    

    
  
This tip: http://blog.dmitryleskov.com/small-hacks/putting-the-received-column-in-thunderbird-to-work/

mentioned here Bug 266434 Comment 26 fixes this. But really that should be the default behaviour.



          You need to log in
          before you can comment on or make changes to this bug.
        






  

    
  







  

    

      
Attachment

      

      
      
      
      
    

    

      

        

          

            
General

            

              Creator: 



            

            
Created: 

            
Updated: 

            
Size: