Emails from 1970?!

8 replies

HexBramble · 14/08/2015 06:57

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?!

OP posts:

saffronwblue · 14/08/2015 07:03

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

HighOverTheFenceLeapsSunnyJim · 14/08/2015 07:23

Me too!

I'm using an iPhone.

Germgirl · 14/08/2015 07:29

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

Original poster

HexBramble · 14/08/2015 07:57

So I'm not alone.
Phew!

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

OP posts:

cathcustard · 14/08/2015 08:04

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

SoupDragon · 14/08/2015 08:07

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 · 14/08/2015 10:57

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 · 14/08/2015 14:42

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.

Flip