On 11/20/2004 13:26, "Kenneth Porter" shiva@sewingwitch.com wrote:
--On Saturday, November 20, 2004 6:22 AM -0500 Steven Kuck scrib@afn.org wrote:
As I said, I can guarantee messages from the future are wrong. Disagree?
Perhaps messages from more than a day (or N days) in the past could be bounced saying: "Either your system clock is wrong or your message was unreasonably delayed. Either fix your clock, or make sure your message is still current and send it again." Alternately, the message could be held for approval or date fixing, and you could set that user as "Date Impaired" so that all messages from that individual get fixed - if they're off.
This seems a reasonable approach, given a configurable delivery delay tolerance. One could also cross-check References headers against messages already received, to set a lower limit on the time stamp. If a message claims to have been sent prior to one it references (modulo some tolerance), then it can be bounced/modified/moderated.
Keep in mind that there are MUAs which set the Date: as the message is begun, not when it is sent. If the sender leaves it as a draft for a couple of days before sending, the Date: will be "two days old". (What one wants to do with that date is another matter.)
--John