While it may not stop the feds from snooping on citizens' digital conversations, Internet activist/blogger Cory Doctorow says that if Texas passes email privacy legislation, it would be symbolic. Doctorow wrote on the Boing Boing blog this week, that "it's an important step toward establishing a better norm in privacy standards for files on cloud-based services." The bill, which would require law enforcement to get a warrant to read email which is stricter than the current policy. Today, law enforcement is required to follow the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, in which no warrant is needed for officials to access …

Stripe, an online payments system used by developers, is now allowing its cusomters to send email receipts directly to their consumers. Businesses can turn on the email receipts feature under the emails section of their Stripe dashboard. The feature came in response to customer requests.

Email marketing services company Vocus has added new email tools to its Vocus Marketing Suite, including a feature that lets marketers send event-driven triggered emails by date. In addition, the updated tool kit includes a dual message creation feature so that marketers can create A/B split tests. The update also brings the ability to append Google Analytics parameters within emails to track a campaign's effect on Web traffic.

Google released an updated version of Gmail this week which allow users to read their incoming mail into tabbed sections. One such section is the "Promotions" tab, which could mean that email marketing messages aren't getting into the main inbox, but rather a sub-folder in which marketing messages live. As Business Insider points out, this could mean that senders will see a drop in open rates when sending to contacts that use the Promotions tab. If this starts to happen, marketers could try to send plain text emails, which will be automatically sent to the mail inbox. These emails can …

Jamie Estrada, a former campaign manager for the New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez, was indicted on federal charges of hacking into the campaign's email system and allegedly stealing emails sent between the governor, her staff and her supporters. U.S. Attorney Kenneth Gonzales announced the charges against Estrada on Thursday. Prosecutors claim that Estrada used a password and username to change the governor's campaign organization's login details after Martinez took office as governor in 2011.

Landing pages that host $500 giveaway contests generate 700% more email subscribers than landing pages not running contests, according to a ra new study by contest company Incentivibe. The report, which looked at data from March 15-April 15 from three million visitor interactions on 100 websites that ran monthly giveaways, revealed that Sundays were the busiest day for consumers to sign up as email subscribers, and Wednesdays had the lowest rate.

Doggyloot.com, a dog products e-commerce company, introduced a new abandoned shopping cart tactic to its email marketing program back in March and is seeing good results. The company sends emails to customers that have added items to their online but leave the site without completing the transaction. They send the emails an hour after the customer has disappeared. These emails are driving an increase in conversions. The company reported this week that 14% of consumers that open the abandoned cart email message click through and revisit the site and 12% of those who click through complete their purchase.

Marketing technology services company Responsys introduced a new cloud-based marketing service last week, in a move expand its business beyond its email service provider roots. Responsys' new Interact Marketing Cloud helps marketers create marketing programs that incorporate demographic, campaign response, behavior, social and preference data into a single campaign management tool.

Christopher Kojm, the chairman of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC), had his personal email hacked into by the hacker that goes by the name Guccifer. Guccifer accessed email exchanges between Kojm and 9/11 Commission members, as well as emails that contained his banking information, as well as documents covering the latest Obama administration's transition earlier this year. This is not the first attempt to access the private communications of a political figure by the hacker. Guccifer has also claimed to hack into the accounts of other public people including US Senator Lisa Murkowski, General Colin Powell, and Sidney Blumenthal, …

British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond is pushing to give police and security services in the UK access to the email and social media records during criminal investigations in what he claims will help prevent terrorists causing harm on Britain's streets. Hammond added his comments this week to support Home Secretary Theresa May who is trying to resurrect the Communications Data Bill -- controversial legislation that would require internet companies to retain records of emails and social media messages for a year and let police and security agencies access the data, but not the content of messages.