SpamCop POP3 email out of order

Posted in .geeks earlier this week...  reposting here for any thoughts.

Anyone else seeing this?

I have Thunderbird 2 for Windows.  I download my spamcop email over 
SSL-POP3.  Thunderbird has my mailboxes to the view setting of "Order 
Received".

When I view my mail via the web, the order looks correct as it should. 
But upon download via POP3, I get a series of messages out of order. 
Here's an example of some datestamps (all dates are today):

4:37 am
7:22 am
7:55 pm
5:00 am
9:40 am
12:12 pm
1:17 pm
3:44 pm

What kind of order is this?  Why would the POP3 server send messages out 
of order?

AndrewB wrote:
> Posted in .geeks earlier this week...  reposting here for any
> thoughts.

I'm commenting here just so that you won't feel invisible.

I didn't understand the point of your question in .geeks 5 days ago, and
I still don't understand the point of your question in .help.

I suspect I still won't understand the point of your question if it
appears in spamcop or .social 5 more days hence.


-- 
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin

AndrewB wrote:
> Posted in .geeks earlier this week...  reposting here for any
> thoughts.

I'm going to approach this by asking you some questions and making some
remarks.

> Thunderbird has my mailboxes to the view setting of "Order
> Received".

Tbird's order received is based on a value obtained from the server's
date/timestamp.

> When I view my mail via the web, the order looks correct as it should.

What does that statement mean?  It is likely that your webmail's 'Date'
column works like Tbird's (or other mailuser agents') Date column.  A
Date column typically is based on the date which the sender has put on
the mail, which is actually part of the DATA section during the mail
transaction process, like To and From and Subject.  That is, the To and
From and Date and Subject say whatever the sender wants them to say,
just like the body.

> But upon download via POP3, I get a series of messages out of order.

The 'order' of messages depends on what you are ordering them by.  You
can order them by From or by Subject or by the Date header or in the
case of Tbird you can also order them by order received based on data
from a Received date/timestamp.

> What kind of order is this?  Why would the POP3 server send messages
> out of order?

Perhaps you are mistakenly thinking that the information in the Date
header of spam is the date/time received.


-- 
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin

Further research reveals....

Mike Easter wrote:

> Tbird's order received is based on a value obtained from the server's
> date/timestamp.

Tbird's order received is not precisely the same as if the field's value
were 'date/time received' -- OE has both 'Sent' and 'Received' values.
Sent is based on the Date header.  Received is based on the top Received
traceline date/timestamp.  Tbird's 'order received' is based on the
order which the folder being sorted on that value was populated by the
item.

Some Tbird investigators find that if you move mail items around from
one folder to another and then back again, that sorting by 'order
received' is misleading.

-- 
Mike Easter
kibitzer, not SC admin

Mike Easter wrote:

> I'm going to approach this by asking you some questions and making some
> remarks.

Excellent.  Thanks.  :)


>> Thunderbird has my mailboxes to the view setting of "Order
>> Received".
> 
> Tbird's order received is based on a value obtained from the server's
> date/timestamp.

You sure of that?  I would think it would be FIFO-based.  Such that if 
messages A, B, C, and D arrived in that order, that's how they'd be 
listed.  Yet I see orders like B, C, A, D.


>> When I view my mail via the web, the order looks correct as it should.
> 
> What does that statement mean?  It is likely that your webmail's 'Date'
> column works like Tbird's (or other mailuser agents') Date column.  A
> Date column typically is based on the date which the sender has put on
> the mail, which is actually part of the DATA section during the mail
> transaction process, like To and From and Subject.  That is, the To and
> From and Date and Subject say whatever the sender wants them to say,
> just like the body.

Sorry for not being crystal clear.  What I mean is that when I use 
spamcop's webmail interface, the listing is as 'order received', 
independent of the datestamp of the message.  Message #6 was the 6th to 
arrive, even if it's datestamp is earlier than message #5.


>> But upon download via POP3, I get a series of messages out of order.
> 
> The 'order' of messages depends on what you are ordering them by.  You
> can order them by From or by Subject or by the Date header or in the
> case of Tbird you can also order them by order received based on data
> from a Received date/timestamp.

The 'Order Received' value appears to be some sort of monotonic counter 
that the client associates with the message.  You can add this column to 
view in the client to see it.  I can't find the value in the message 
when viewing it's raw source (Windows: ctrl-u).


>> What kind of order is this?  Why would the POP3 server send messages
>> out of order?
> 
> Perhaps you are mistakenly thinking that the information in the Date
> header of spam is the date/time received.

This isn't spam.  These are legitimate messages I'm referring to.  Such 
that, via the web interface, I may see a friend's message who sends an 
email out to a few people, and later a reply-all from one of the people. 
  In Thunderbird, I sometimes see the reply first before the original 
with sorting by 'Order Received'.

This sorting of my mailboxes used to work as I would expect it to.  But 
recently, and I can't quite put my finger on it, something changed.