# Yahoo mail from the future

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-mail-from-the-future/335862>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [December 16, 2005, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-mail-from-the-future/335862 "2005-12-16T04:05:03Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 6\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Meeko](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e495f1/32.png) [@Meeko](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Meeko)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2005, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-mail-from-the-future/335862/1 "2005-12-16T04:05:03Z")

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I have a Yahoo Email from December 8.

December 8 2027.  
How could the Emailer do this?  
obviously its for top billing. Any other reasons?

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**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2005, 4:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-mail-from-the-future/335862/2 "2005-12-16T04:12:15Z")

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Was the email sent from a Yahoo account or into your Yahoo account, or both?

If sent from a non-Yahoo account into your Yahoo account, the sending server has a date problem.

Then again, Yahoo is based in California where just, … well, … things are different.

😃

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**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2005, 4:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-mail-from-the-future/335862/3 "2005-12-16T04:15:16Z")

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I have to ask; what was in the email? 😉

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**Author:** ![Derleth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Derleth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Derleth)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2005, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-mail-from-the-future/335862/4 "2005-12-16T04:20:52Z")

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> [@Meeko](#):
>
> How could the emailer do this?

Simple: Fill that date into the email’s ‘Date:’ header field.

What, you thought there was some sort of _verification_ involved? Nah. Email server software doesn’t even verify the ‘From:’ field, which is why it’s always a lie in spam email.

If you wanted to read headers (at least possible in GMail, I don’t know about Yahoo email) you might get a better idea of when it was sent, unless it never left a local machine (and thus outside computers never had a chance to leave a more reasonable date stamp) or all of the machines it passed through left similarly bogus date stamps.

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**Author:** ![Fear\_Itself](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fear_itself/32/19637_2.png) [@Fear\_Itself](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fear_Itself)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2005, 4:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-mail-from-the-future/335862/5 "2005-12-16T04:26:02Z")

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Lots of spammers spoof the date field so that their message stays at the top of your inbox.

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**Author:** ![SenorBeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senorbeef/32/2220_2.png) [@SenorBeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SenorBeef)\
**Post date:** [December 16, 2005, 5:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/yahoo-mail-from-the-future/335862/6 "2005-12-16T05:40:55Z")

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What’s special about the year 2027? I had a computer/file system/date glitch which left a bunch of my files on the computer dated 2027. Is it a special year in computer terms?