Can the date be forged?

[Myron]

I was just wondering if the date on a message could be forged. For the past couple of weeks I have been receiving mail with the date of the message two or more days earlier than the actual date/time received. I Check mail and report spam several time a day, and Cox seems to deliver mail to me immediately. If I report those older messages they get bounced for being too old. Since spam Cop ignores any submissions of spam that is more than 72 hours old forging an earlier date would be one way for spammers to avoid getting reported.

Myron

[Spambo]

Yes the date can be forged. However SpamCop uses the date/time stamp added by the destiination (your provider's) mail server whenever possible. If you're constantly getting "old spam" then the problem is likely that your provider's mail server has its clock set wrong.

[Wazoo]

Let's put it this way. The SpamCop parser takes the date/time from the top-most "valid" header line, which would normally be from your IPS's e-mail server. By posting a "tracking URL" of one of these spams you're submitted, "we" could look at that spam and be able to (hopefully) tell you exactly where the issue is hitting you. Extreme examples range from HotMail for instance having dates et on a few of their servers a number of years in the past .... and the infamous [at]Home legends of jerking a computer out of the rack at failure, fixing it, putting that computer back on a "spares" shelf, and when plugged back in to replace the next failed computer, would then start churning away processing the e-mail that hadn't been delivered when it was pulled out of the rack, some folks seeing e-mail delievered a year after it was actually sent.

[dra007]

Actually I got quite a few spams with the date set ahead of the recieving time...sometimes by several days..but I do get the occasioal one stamped 2002 or 2003.