[proving date that message was sent?]

[Luvrhino]

I have a question about Date and time stamps on emails. I was required to send an email reply within a certain time frame. I did. I have a copy of my reply and orginal emails. Which are dated and time stamped. The company claims that they never recived my reply...did all sort of tech checking etc.and still could not find my reply email. Does not the date and time prove that I sent an email...is this something easy changed? It means a world to me. I stand to lose a great deal of $. Can these people just be saying they did not recieve it? I have no clue other than what is on the top of my emails any tech stuff about email.
thanks, I really need to know if I can prove something by the time and date on the copy of my email reply.

[marcus0263]

Originally Posted by Luvrhino

I have a question about Date and time stamps on emails. I was required to send an email reply within a certain time frame. I did. I have a copy of my reply and orginal emails. Which are dated and time stamped. The company claims that they never recived my reply...did all sort of tech checking etc.and still could not find my reply email. Does not the date and time prove that I sent an email...is this something easy changed? It means a world to me. I stand to lose a great deal of $. Can these people just be saying they did not recieve it? I have no clue other than what is on the top of my emails any tech stuff about email.
thanks, I really need to know if I can prove something by the time and date on the copy of my email reply.

Easy, just show the headers

[CyberSmurf]

I like to bcc myself at another address for important messages.

That way, the headers in the copy that I receive show that the message was actually sent.

[n5bb]

Originally Posted by Luvrhino

... I really need to know if I can prove something by the time and date on the copy of my email reply.

Welcome to the EMD Forums, Luvrhino!

I'm going to disagree with the other posters. You are asking if you can prove something by your copy of the sent message. You really can't prove anything with your copy, for these reasons:

• Anybody can forge sent headers in a text editor (Notepad). As you will see below, they usually contain very little, and you could edit the date and time stamps and To address in another email and nobody could easily tell you had made this up without an examination of the server records at your email provider.
• The sent copy headers normally provide no record of the actual transmission of the message to the receiver. They only record that an attempt was made to compose and send a message. For example, here is a munged copy of what Gmail saves for a sent message (sent to a non-existing To address):

  MIME-Version: 1.0
  Received: by 10.227.44.20 with HTTP; Mon, 30 Aug 2010 18:03:47 -0700 (PDT)
  Bcc: my alternate address <joecitizen@example.org>
  Date: Mon, 30 Aug 2010 20:03:47 -0500
  Delivered-To: jcitizen@gmail.com
  Message-ID: <AAPPQkTimA-EtWMfjpAxNgnnM834BcYhAbbXY3JXv@mail.gmail.com>
  Subject: Test from Gmail to bad adr (with Bcc)
  From: Jim <jcitizen@gmail.com>
  To: janecitizen-does-not-exist@example.org
  Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=002215975ace42a844048f142725
  
  --002215975ace42a844048f142725
  Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
  
  Testing
  
  --002215975ace42a844048f142725
  Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
  
  Testing<br><br>
  
  --002215975ace42a844048f142725--

  This is exactly the same as if the To address was a real one. So even though the email was not sent (it bounced), you can't tell this from your sent copy.
• And the Bcc copy sent to the other address also only shows that your email client claimed to send that message also to the other address. There is no proof in this message that your email service actually sent the message. It might have rejected it for some reason, or the destination server might have rejected the message.
• The only way to verify that your email provider's MTA actually sent the message to the target MTA is to ask your email provider to check their transmit server logs. They may refuse to do this, or charge you a fee. If your email provider then sent a message directly to the destination organization with a copy of the MTA to MTA transaction, then you might have a leg to stand on.

Bill

[CyberSmurf]

Originally Posted by n5bb

...
I'm going to disagree with the other posters. You are asking if you can prove something by your copy of the sent message. You really can't prove anything with your copy, for these reasons:
...

Maybe, but at least a BCC gives a place to start. Especially if the message is left on the server.

[n5bb]

I agree that Bcc leaves the sender a record of what they were trying to send, and this can be useful. But it tells you nothing about what actually happened when your email provider tried to send the message to the recipient.

[CyberSmurf]

moderator: changed thread title from "General Question" to "[proving date that message was sent?]".