While consumers open marketing emails around the clock, different demographics open emails at different times of the day, according to a new report from SimpleRelevance. The report showed that men are more likely to click on emails in the early morning, for example, while women are more likely to click through to a website in the afternoon or evening. The report also found that people with household incomes of more than $150,000 are more likely to click between 5am and 8am, while people with household incomes less than $75,000 are more likely to click between 9am and 8pm.

The technology law-focused news site Groklaw has decided to shut down citing challenges in email privacy as its reason. Pamela Jones, the site's founder, explained in a farewell post today the she was inspired by the closure of Lavabit, a company that provided an encrypted email service before being forced to shut down earlier this month. "There is no way to do Groklaw without email," she wrote. "Therein lies the conundrum."

While almost half of consumers are opening emails on their mobile devices, only 11% of opened emails are getting clicks, half of what an email opened on a desktop garners, according to a new report from YesMail. The report, which analyzed more than 5 billion marketing emails in Q2 2013, revealed that marketers aren't optimizing their messages, which is causing a drop off in clicks. Interestingly, the report revealed that 82% of mobile email activity comes from Apple devices and and 17% comes from Android devices.

Silent Circle, an email encryption services company that shut down earlier this month, after claiming that email could never really be private, has given more color to these assertions. In a blog post, the company explained that metadata prevents the company from simply use an asymmetric key cryptography plug-in to make email communications between users secure. "If the goal is simply to encrypt the body of the message there are services and products that accomplish this," explained Silent Circle's technical operations manager Louis Kowolowski in a blog post. "If your goal is to not have metadata leakage in your otherwise …

Cloze is a new app that helps users organize their email inboxes by their relationship to the sender. The iOS app prioritizes emails that are sent by people that the user has a relationship with based on their sending history. Messages from contacts that the user has a lot of correspondence with are delivered to the top of the inbox, while messages from new contacts are lower down. The app also works for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

Email newsletters with subject lines that are limited to 4-15 characters had the highest average open rate last year, according to a new report from MailerMailer. The annual Email Marketing Metrics Report found that 15.8% of these emails with short subject lines were opened. In comparison, longer subject lines resulted in lower open rates, subject lines with 16-27 characters for instance have only an 8.9% open rate. The report also revealed that email newsletter campaigns sent in the first half of 2012 had an average open rate of 9.7%, and those sent in the second half of the year had …

Yahoo has shut down its email service in China. The company announced that it was closing the site back in April, but it is finally now shut down. Yahoo posted a note on its log-in page encouraging users to transfer their accounts to Alibaba's Alimail. The closing is part of Yahoo's departure from China. In January, the company shut down its music service in China.

Brazil's communications minister Paulo Bernardo Silva has proposed giving emails the same level of protection that is given to letters sent in the mail. If passed, the legislation would make it a criminal offense to read someone else's email. The proposal is part of a bill that is being debated in Brazil's Congress which would regulate the use of civilian computers in Brazil. The news follows revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency's surveillance programs have targeted Brazil.

Lavabit founder Ladar Levison has raised $100,000 in legal fees through donations which will help fund his fight against the government in the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. Levison has been somewhat limited in explaining his reasons for shutting down his email encryption service last week, but he did allude to government pressure to do so. His service was reportedly used by whistleblower Edward Snowden to send private emails. If Levison wins the case, he might be able to reinstate the company.

The Environmental Protection Agency is being investigated for allegedly using personal email accounts in order to get around public records laws, according to U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth. The judge has given conservative law firm Landmark Legal Foundation permission to investigate whether EPA officials used personal accounts for business and excluded these emails from the law firm's Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request when the firm sued the government agency last year. The ruling could expose the EPA's record keeping techniques.