Time stamp on e-mails?
 

I was in an e-mail exchange with someone purporting to live in Richmond,Va.I sent him some questions about a car and when I received his reply, it contained this time indicator. "In a message dated 1/11/2012 8:58:57 P.M. Armenian Standard Time, tfmcmahon@yahoo.com writes:". Does this indicate he was in the Armenian time zone when he received my reply? That would sound like a big red flag for scam to me. Any technical observations on this? thanks Tom

Time stamps are easy to fake.

The headers in the message will tell you more.

Is he selling a car that you are interested in?

Post his ad and replies.

You can usually spot a scammer from a mile away simply by what they write and how it's written.

I am up to speed on scams and not interested in the car.But if he was advertising it on craigs list in Richmond,Va,why would he bother to fake a time on it from Armenia.Seems like itwould be an error on his part to let me see the referance to what time zone he is in.

Well if it is a scam at some point he'll claim to be out of the country so a time stamp from Armenia does him no harm whether faked or not.

To clarify, when I said timestamps are easy to fake I was not suggesting that he did in fact intentionally fake it, I meant if he was in fact in Armenia he could easily generate a VA timestamp and return path.

Timestamps really don't mean much.

This can also happen if the person's computer time is not correct. My boss has one computer at home that is 7 hours off.

Look at the mail header, you should be able to find the source IP address, then do an IP WHOIS Lookup and see who owns the address space, or put it in the IP Address locator tool here and see roughly where it is coming from.

IP Address Locator - Enter an IP address to find its location - Lookup Country Region City etc

Thank you
 

Gentleman,Thank you for the information.Didn`t know that site existed.Will follow up in a latter post.TFM

Clock
 

the location shows Reston,Va,so it looks like it may well have been the clock issue.Makes me feel better that it wasn`t a scam,just a poor ad and a not so hot 912.Thanks guys!