British intelligence agency MI5 has warned UK citizens and members of the public abroad not to respond to emails and phone calls coming from scammers who are posing as spies. The security service warned of the scam on its website explaining that spammers have sent messages which claim to be from M15 officials including MI5 director general Sir Jonathan Evans. The requests solicit money from the recipients. The agency has asked anyone who receives these emails or calls to report it to the police.

Five people Slovenians were arrested for allegedly sending spam emails to the accounting departments of small and medium businesses. The email looked to come from a local bank or the Slovenian State Tax Authority and warned recipients about late payment fees. The email encouraged victims to share banking information.It also came with an attachment that was infected with a trojan.The scam cost Slovenians around $2.5 million.

CoreMotives, a marketing automation company operating completely within Microsoft Dynamics CRM, has been focusing on globalizing its product and has added German, Brazilian Portuguese, Chinese and Japanese versions of its SMB toolset since email marketing services company Silverpop acquired the company last year. The company also revealed that it has increased its billings by 136 percent and added more than 270 customers since the acquisition. New clients include The Seattle Seahawks, Sounders FC and the Anaheim Ducks.

Web-based spam is on the rise, and it is often better at getting past traditional security defenses than email-based malware, according to a new study from Palo Alto Networks. In its Modern Malware Review report, the company revealed that almost 90 percent of "unknown malware" came from browsing the Web, compared to just 2 percent which came from email. In addition, the report found that antivirus vendors are better at detecting email malware than Web-based spam.

Despite talk of getting rid of email at some businesses, email isn't going anywhere in the work place. In fact, according to Radicati the number of business emails that will be sent will increase by 13 percent every year between now and 2016. As volume goes up, professionals will have to find better ways to organize and manage their email, and IT departments will have to improve their servers and systems for maintaining email workflow and security.

While triggered emails only represent 5 percent of total email volume, they tend to get the highest response for email marketers, according to a new benchmark report from Epsilon. According to the study, which looked at 360 million triggered emails they sent in Q4 2012, triggered emails continue to outperform "Business As Usual" emails with open rates averaging 46.7 percent in Q4 2012. While this is down a percentage point from Q2 2012, these emails are still outperforming business as usual emails. Overall, the volume of triggered messages, which includes welcome messages, thank you emails, and abandoned shopping carts emails, …

Gordon Wozniak, a California-based city councilman has taken a lot of criticism for his recent proposal to tax email. His argument that an email tax could held finance the post office has come across as out of touch. However, Los Angeles Times political columnist George Skelton, has defended the Berkeley councilman's position, arguing that a tax on email would cost very little to users and would help consumers manage overflowing inboxes and could even help to eliminate spam.

Trusting your gut and making a good first impression are tips Chaunsea Keller heard from her mother when she would go out on dates. The VP of E-proDirect has taken her mother's advice and turned it into an advice column for email marketers. Among other dating tips that Keller says marketers can apply to their email programs include: "Make Yourself Available," and "Don't Give it All Away on the First Date."

Mailbox, an iOS app for organizing email, now has a million users. The app, which helps users organizer their inboxes, launched in early February and was acquired by Dropbox just last week. Mailbox requires a reservation for a user to sign up for the service, and according to CNET reporter Lance Whitney, who signed up for an account today, there are about 445,500 users ahead of him. He estimates that it'll take about five days to get an account, based on Mailbox's new member processing rate.

California State Senator Mark Leno, a Democrat from San Francisco, has proposed a bill that would give consumers more privacy in the inbox. The proposal, which was drafted with help from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, would require state and local government agents to get a warrant before asking email service providers for access to a citizen's email. Earlier this week, lawmakers in Washington met to discuss ammending The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986, an change that would also likely require law enforcement to have a warrant to access a consumer's email account.