The FBI has issued a press release insisting that it does not send unsolicited email, in response to a spam email with a malicious link claiming that it was from "FBIsecretservice" and imploring recipients to click on a link or risk "loosing everything you ever worked for." The FBI press release warns consumers not to click on the link in the spam email and directs them to the Internet Crime Complaint Center to report this or any other spam messages they receive.

The BlackBerry Z10 comes with a universal inbox called Hub that includes a feature allowing users to delete all of the messages in their inbox at once. The function removes messages from the phone, but most users use their BlackBerrys as an ancillary email device and can still access current and archive messages from their PCs. 

An online study conducted in January by YouGov found that 75% of the 2000 consumer respondents feel overwhelmed by the amout of email they are receiving from retailers, and are turned off and resentful about receiving them. Some retailers are already adapting. Fab.com, for example, saw 75% of its traffic coming from email in 2011, but today that number is down to 25% with smartphone and tablet apps picking up much of the slack. Zappos.com has invested heavily in personalization to ensure emails remain relevant, and in analytics to monitor consumer response and sentiment.

The much anticipated Mailbox app for iPhone launched in the Apple App store today as a free download. Registrants for the service are able to enter their registration number and code to activate the app, which manages user expectations by displaying a graphic with the count of how many people are in front of them and behind them in the queue. As of this morning, more than 250,000 people had signed up for the service.

Microsoft has launched a million dollar advertising campaign to convince consumers that Google's practice of scanning emails to deliver targeted messages - which it says leaves consumers 'Scroogled' - is a privacy violation, and urges users instead to switch to Outlook.com. The campaign is believed to be attributable in part to Mark Penn, a political strategist and former advisor to Bill and Hillary Clinton who joined Microsoft last year in a corporate strategy role.

A federal lawsuit claiming that Chicago police offers are entitled to overtime pay for scanning emails on department issued smartphones remains on track. The suit claims that police department management asked officers to scan and respond to emails on their BlackBerrys but not to file for overtime when doing so. The judge assigned to the case says that it raises the issue of whether scanning and responding to emails constitutes work.  

The DMARC.org working group announced today that the DMARC authentication service now protects 2 billion of the 3.3 billion consumer inboxes worldwide and 80% of US inboxes. In the last two months of 2012, 325 million messages were rejected by mailbox providers for being unauthenticated, 49 million of which were from highly phished domains. 

According to a new report by the DMA, 89% of businesses say email is "important" or "very important," yet 34% are unable to calculate the revenue earned from email. Over half (56%) the survey respondents expect their organization's email budgets to increase in 2013, while 5% expect email spending to decrease.

SMS messaging company Tatango has announced its acquisition of text message marketing platform Broadtexter. The acquisition gives Tatango more reach into the entertainment vertical and complements the company's recent acquistion of restaurant industry SMS specialist HungryThumb.

A new service called Bananatag allows personal email senders to add open and click tracking to their individual messages using the same image and link tracking techniques employed by ESPs. The service integrates with almost any email service, through a Chrome and Firefox extension for Gmail, a plugin for Outlook, or through a tweak to a contact's address. Bananatag is free for up to 5 emails per day and $5 per month for unlimited tracking.