Companies such as AOL, Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and Facebook have been legally obligated since 1998 to contact the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children when they find child pornography on their networks. In recent years, some of these companies have gone beyond alerting the center when receiving complaints, and have developed sophisticated image scanning software that identifies offending files passing through their networks. The Office of the Attorney General in Virginia explains that these tactics are perfectly legal even without a warrant, as it is not a government entity doing the searching, but a private company that wants to …

Most prescription drug spam is not a scam at all, but a sophisticated globally distributed affiliate marketing and ecommerce operation. A researcher at the University of California San Diego placed over 800 test orders on online pharmacies found promoted in spam emails, and reports that for all but one of the orders he received the products he purchased. The companies that send the spam emails typically receive a 30% - 40% commission for orders placed.

A startup service called Shopmine culls items from users' Pinterest feeds and turns them into a daily email of purchaseable products. The service selects products from the boards the users follow and vets selected items for purchasability, to ensure that they are available for purchase online before including them in the email. The email links back to the promoted item in a Shopmine product page where purchasing options are listed. 

In an upmarket variation of its $1 messaging program, Facebook is reportedly allowing users of the service to send a message to CEO Mark Zuckerberg for $100. A Facebook spokesperson commented, "We are testing some extreme price points to see what works to filter spam."

Facebook recently introduced a program where users of the site can pay $1 to send a message to other users they do not personally know. A recent study by AYTM Market Research finds that 90% of consumers do not intend to use this service. Brands, however, may find it more attractive. In April 2012, 46% of marketers used Facebook messages, but the same group reported that only 19% expected to continue doing so over the next 12 months. The new program aims to make messaging more attractive to brands. 

Researchers at Stanford University have developed a system called GmailValet which relies on a pool of online workers to personally sort and filter an inbox. Despite the apparent expense of hiring people to do the work of technology, initial tests found that at California's minimum wage of $8/hour the service would cost the average user only $1.80 per day.

A new study by Listrak finds that 19% of e-retailers are sending emails to shoppers who abandoned carts and left the store, encouraging them to return and complete the purchase. The figure rose from 14.6% in 2011, spearheaded by smaller retailers who nearly doubled their adoption of the practice in 2012. 

Most online retailers reported a strong holiday season, with year-over-year increases in revenue and traffic. American Apparel was among them, expecting four times the Cyber Monday traffic compared to 2011. Instead the brand saw traffic balloon to a 20-times increase instead, which its head of e-commerce attributes to email. American Apparel doubled its email list from the preceding year and used it to aggressively promote a 20% off site-wide sale and a free shipping promotion.

A security patch released by Yahoo earlier this week to address a vulnerability exposed last week is ineffective, according to researchers at Offensive Security. The researchers used a video to demonstrate that the patch provided by Yahoo does little to defend against an attack. The vulnerability was made public last week when a hacker posted a video on YouTube demonstrating how to breach the system's security with a malicious link in a spam message. 

Email marketing and delivery provider SMTP has announced its acquisition of email design testing and analytics company PreviewMyEmail.com. PME allows users to see how messages render across a range of clients and platforms prior to sending.