Wrong Time by exactly 5 hours in the future

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share666
Posts: 129
Joined: September 2nd, 2004, 6:49 pm

Wrong Time by exactly 5 hours in the future

Post by share666 »

The time stamp on my email is off by exactly 5 hours in the future. The header information on the email, and the received date and the date all show the same time - five hours in the future. I have tried all sorts of suggestions and have modified the preferences in an effort to force the application to recognize the correct time.
I assume the person I am sending the email to also sees the email as being sent in the future.

It's been this way for years but I thought today I would see if I could figure this out.
Does anybody have a clue or is this just the way it is?
Thanks.
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DanRaisch
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Joined: September 23rd, 2004, 8:57 pm
Location: Somewhere on the right coast

Re: Wrong Time by exactly 5 hours in the future

Post by DanRaisch »

Probably has nothing to do with Thunderbird itself. Check the system time, including making sure that the correct time zone in Windows.
share666
Posts: 129
Joined: September 2nd, 2004, 6:49 pm

Re: Wrong Time by exactly 5 hours in the future

Post by share666 »

Oh I've done all that and went through all the posts I could find about this issue. Just something weird I can't trap and occasionally wonder if anyone has any insight. After all, they are computers and always right so maybe I'm really living five hours in the future. It would explain several things!
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tanstaafl
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Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm

Re: Wrong Time by exactly 5 hours in the future

Post by tanstaafl »

Use view -> message source or control-U and look at the Date: header in the message (not what's displayed when you read the message normally). Check that its correct.

I just got a email whose date/time is listed as 6:28 in the folder listing. I'm in the EST time zone. Looking at the headers its: Date: Tue, 10 May 2022 10:28:49 +0000

During the summer EST is 4 hours behind GMT, so 10:28 + 0 - 4 = 6:28 which is what's displayed.

Is the time displayed correctly in webmail (browser based)? If it is, then something on your PC is causing the problem. Any possibility something is setting an environmental variable for the time/date for Thunderbird? Seems very unlikely if you're using Windows, if you're using Linux its a possibility.

tools -> activity manager has a time stamp for any activities. If you're using POP you could check for new mail. Otherwise you could delete a message. Check if it uses the right time stamp.
share666
Posts: 129
Joined: September 2nd, 2004, 6:49 pm

Re: Wrong Time by exactly 5 hours in the future

Post by share666 »

I changed the setting "privacy.resistFingerprinting" from "true" to "false" and the problem went away.

Thanks
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tanstaafl
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Joined: July 30th, 2003, 5:06 pm

Re: Wrong Time by exactly 5 hours in the future

Post by tanstaafl »

It defaults to false on my configuration.

I found https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/commen ... _timezone/ which claims "Setting privacy.resistFingerprinting to true makes your browser show your local time as UTC+0" . https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/commen ... _override/ also complains about it changing the time zone.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1364261
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