Emails from 1970?!

[HexBramble]

I occasionally get emails dated 1/1/1970 - they're blank, no message, no sender details.

Just checking my All Mailbox now for an email I'd lost, and I've found about 50 more of these blank emails with this mysterious date.

Any ideas why?!

[saffronwblue]

I get these on my phone! Would love to know why...

[HighOverTheFenceLeapsSunnyJim]

Me too!

I'm using an iPhone.

[Germgirl]

I get those too. I just reset the phone and they vanish. No idea why they appear or why they have that date.

[HexBramble]

So I'm not alone.
Phew!

Still a mystery though - really keen to know what these are.

[cathcustard]

I get them too, mostly they go straight into junk.
Be interesting to know where they come from.

[SoupDragon]

I'm sure 1/1/1970 is the date iPhones/iPods revert to when they completely run out of charge. It happened a lot on DSs iPod touch. Odd.

[WMittens]

No idea ... why they have that date.

It will be a mail server interpretation of an email with an empty date field - date and time stamps usually can't be empty so it will equate '0' or 'null' with that date. (probably a UNIX server, from what I've read).

From wiki:
"Unix time (also known as POSIX time or Epoch time) is a system for describing instants in time, defined as the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), Thursday, 1 January 1970,[1][note 1] not counting leap seconds."

[RoosterCogburn]

It's a glitch, 010170 is the start of unix time - the point where computers measure time from. Anything prior to that is measured in negative seconds.