The BBC has been read the email accounts of its staff 140 times in the past five years, according to reports. The BBC Investigations Service have read the emails of other employees in order to investigate possible criminal activity allegations including: assault, fraud, theft, bribery and harassment. In addition, the organization's spying department has read employee emails to investigate computer misuse, leaks, and security issues.

Daily deal emails are the most likely way to induce impulse shopping online, according to a new study from Ryan Partnership. The research looked at 16 digital shopping tools to see which had the biggest impact on consumer shopping behavior and customer satisfaction. The study also found that search engines did not have a substantial impact on shopping behavior.

Consumer mobile email adoption has surpassed email opens on the desktop. According to metrics from Litmus, 51 percent of email marketing messages are opened on a mobile device. As mobile adoption continues to grow, marketers should adopt mobile email strategies in order to make their communications more effective.

Target customers that were victims of the retailer's major data breach this holiday season, should also beware of email scams. According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, some customers received emails within a day of Target's data breach news that looked like they were from Target, but contained spammy links.

In an email to supporters sent out this week, Hillary Clinton revealed "big plans for 2014." The email did not reveal any political plans for the potential 2016 presidential candidate, but it did reveal a promotion that Bill Clinton is running through the end of the year. He will match every Clinton Foundation donation dollar-for-dollar through the end of the year.

Mailchimp CEO Ben Chestnut does not think that the rise in new digital communications tools is going to hurt email. In fact, in an interview with Forbes, he said that tools like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter actually help clean out inboxes and make them more efficient. "Friends used to email me pictures of their kids. Instagram cleaned that out of my inbox. At work, project updates would clutter my inbox, but that can get posted to intranets and Yammers, and so on. All those email killers are more like email cleaners," he explained. "I'm not belittling them. It's a noble …

Volkswagen is automatically turning off the email accounts of some employees 30 minutes after their shifts end in a move to give employees a true break from work when they go home. Goldman Sachs encourages lower level employees to take the weekend off and not check email from home. The idea is that employees are checking their email too much at home and are therefore not taking enough time off in their spare time, which can result in worker burnout.

A Midwestern woman was scammed out of more than $2,000 after she responded to a spam email that pretended to be from Coca-Cola. The victim claimed that the spam message told her that if she put a Coca-Cola decal on her van, she would be paid $400 a week. The scammers sent her a fake check which she then deposited. Now she owes the money to the bank.

Wesleyan University's athletic department sent out an year-end email this week congratulating their athletes and coaches on their successes throughout the year. The nice message was sent out to a large list of recipients who were not Bcced and the reply chain got out of control. After a few reply alls and jokes out visits to a urologist, the email chain snowballed with many recipients asking to be removed from the mailing list.

Employees at a Chicago sandwich shop got an email this holiday week that wasn't spreading holiday joy. The restaurant fired their entire staff via email just days before Christmas. The news comes after employees were protesting for higher wages earlier in the month.