The NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times a year, according to a May 2012 report that was created for top NSA officials only. The audit revealed the technological difficulties in managing a sophisticated surveillance program and the lack of safeguards built into the system. According to a report in The Washington Post, one in 10 of the failures could be attributed to typos when an analyst typed the wrong word and was able to retrieve data from emails that they did not intend to access. The audit revealed many instances of unauthorized access to intercepted communications, as well as …

Inbox organizing apps have been all the rage this year. The latest, which is slated to come out in the next few weeks is called Tipbit. It lets consumers organize their mobile email inboxes and integrate them with their social networks, calendars and documents related to the subject of the email correspondence. Essentially the platform integrates calendars with email clients and also allows users to incorporate their Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn data into their inboxes within the app.

After reports circulated yesterday claiming that Google doesn't care about Gmail users' privacy, a report that stemmed from a court document being taken out of context by Consumer Watchdog, Google has responded. The company told Mashable, "We take our users' privacy and security very seriously; recent reports claiming otherwise are simply untrue. We have built industry-leading security and privacy features into Gmail - and no matter who sends an email to a Gmail user, those protections apply." The claim, was pointing to the fact that Gmail users should not expect full privacy, meaning that their emails go through a Google …

Microsoft's email platforms Outlook and Hotmail have been experiencing problems over the past day, though most of the issues have been resolved. "We're having a problem accessing email. You might not be able to see all your email messages," explained Microsoft in a message to Outlook to users. The company has resolved most of the issues. "Outlook.com experienced an incident that caused some users not to be able to access their account or share their SkyDrive files," Microsoft explained. "We have restored web access for all users but some people might still see issues with their mobile devices. We …

Google's comments that Gmail users should not expect privacy, which came out yesterday may have been taken out of context. The comments from a June lawsuit were brought to light yesterday by Consumer Watchdog, a consumer rights advocacy group. The quote, "a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties," was interpreted to mean that Google does not care about consumer privacy, but read in the context of the argument, Google is explaining that emails are processed by a server.

SASS Global Travel, an action sports travel agency, wanted to make its email campaigns stand out. Working with its agency BOLD Worldwide, the travel agency created an email campaign that used data to send personalized videos within email campaigns. The technology integrated customer data into videos, placing the consumer on the vacation before the left their inbox. The videos were crafted for each individual based on their demographics using automated rendering.

Ever since Google redesigned the Gmail inbox and put marketing emails into the "Promotions" tab, email marketers have been worried that response rates will go down. For Jiffy Lube, a company that has millions of email addresses in its databases, nothing has changed since Gmail introduced the promotions tab. "We've found there's been really no impact in our business overall. In fact since the redesign launched, we've seen no change in [email] open rates, and response rates have stayed almost exactly the same," Jeffrey Lack, director of marketing at Jiffy Lube, told Ad Age. Jiffy Lube's experience supports studies from …

Ladar Levison, the owner of the encrypted email service Lavabit, spoke to Democracy Now about why he closed his company. In the interview, he revealed that government pressure led to his decision to close the service. Whistleblower Edward Snowden reportedly used the service and according to Levison, the platform was designed so that even he could not access the private communications of its users. "I felt that in the end I had to pick between the lesser of two evils and that shutting down the service, if it was no longer secure, was the better option," he told Democracy Now. …

Gmail users should not expect that their emails are confidential, said Google in a court filing for a class action suit filed earlier this summer. Advocacy group Consumer Watchdog uncovered the filed and said that this is a "stunning admission" from Google, as the company has come under scrutiny for allegedly sharing private user data with the NSA. John Simpson, director of the Consumer Watchdog privacy project told The Guardian, "People should take them at their word; if you care about your email correspondents' privacy, don't use Gmail."

IRS official Lois Lerner is accused of using personal email to discuss official business, including the alleged targeting of Tea Party groups. House Republicans have asked Lerner to produce any official documents that she sent using her personal email account. According to a request from the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, Lerner sent documents related to her work at the IRS to an email account labeled 'Lois Home.' "This raises some serious questions," wrote committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif. "To understand the extent to which you may have used a non-official email account for official purposes, ... we request …