Silicon Valley judge Lucy Koh is going to make Google go to court to defend its practice of scanning emails. The company is being accused by users of illegally wiretapping by scanning the data of Gmail in order to serve relevant ads. Koh denied Google's defense which claimed that this scanning practice is part of the business operations of offering free email. "In fact, Google's alleged interception of e-mail content is primarily used to create user profiles and to provide targeted advertising - neither of which is related to the transmission of e-mails," she wrote in last week's ruling.

Apple is now allowed to deliver push email communications to German customers that use iOS devices. The functionality was banned for the last year and a half after Motorola won a patent suit against. According to reports, Apple is now allowed to offer push because a German court of appeals has temporarily stayed Motorola's injunction.

Advertising technology company TellApart has acquired email marketing startup company AdStack for what is reportedly "in the single-digit millions." The acquisition brings email targeting, A/B testing and personalization to TellApart. TellApart has the money to expand its offerings. The company has raised $17.75 million over three rounds of funding.

A malicious piece of software that was designed to launch password guessing attacks against websites built with WordPress and Joomla is now being used to attack email and FTP servers. This "Fort Disco" spam was identified by researchers in August after it infected more than 25,000 Windows computers and tried to guess administrator account passwords on more than 6,000 WordPress, Joomla and Datalife Engine websites. Swiss security researcher identified the malware again this week in a number of attacks on POP3, a tool that allows email clients to connect to servers.

EPA employees did not receive sufficient training or guidance from the organization on how to handle emails, according to an inspector general's report released Monday. The report blames the agency not the former officials for using private email accounts to conduct official business. Investigators spoke with top-level employees and determined that these people were not set out to dupe the public.

Yahoo has paid out a $12.50 bounty fee to security researchers that found bugs that were designed to compromise any @yahoo.com email accounts. Yahoo awarded the minuscule sum to Swiss security firm High-Tech Bridge in the form of a voucher that could be spent in the Yahoo company store. High-Tech Bridge released a statement explaining that it set out to test the efficacy of bug bounties by seeing if it could find a flaw on within Yahoo's system. It took them 45 minutes to do so. Yahoo rejected the request explaining via email that the bug was already known and …

During Thursday's Senate Intelligence Committee hearing, California senator Dianne Feinstein admitted that the NSA collects emails through "upstream" collection methods. This means that the security agency is accessing emails directly from the Internet as these messages are being sent, not just from an Internet provider's server which would be the 'downstream' approach. "Upstream collection... occurs when NSA obtains internet communications, such as e-mails, from certain US companies that operate the Internet background, i.e., the companies that own and operate the domestic telecommunications lines over which internet traffic flows," she said. Tech blogs have criticized Feinstein's use of the term "background" …

Three of Germany's largest email providers have teamed up to offer "Email Made in Germany," which offers consumers email services without the prying eyes of the National Security Agency. The providers, which includes partly state-owned Deutsche Telekom AG, promise users that they send encrypted email through German servers which are subject to strict privacy laws. More than a hundred thousand Germans have signed up since August when the service first launched.

The Sacramento Business Journal has renamed its email marketing newsletters. The former "Morning Roundup," has been renamed, "Morning Edition." The email newsletter called "Daily Update" is now called "Afternoon Edition." The publication explained the updated names are part of the publisher's new strategy "to better explain to our audience how we get local business news to you."

Irish discount airline Ryanair has created a customer service email address so that passengers can get in touch with the airline, following an enforcement action filed by the Irish National Consumer Agency. The agency filed the compliance notice to the airline back in May. The airline responded this week, by updating the 'Contact us' area on its website. Ryanair's new customer service email address is customerqueries@ryanair.com.