In an interview with The Guardian, Phil Zimmermann, the creator of email encryption software PGP and president of email encrypting service Silent Circle, warned consumer email users about the threats of exposing their metadata to spies. He said that while you can protect the content of an email message, he warned about the inability to encrypt email headers and metadata. He pointed out that journalists are at risk, as governments may spy on journalists who exchange emails with sensitive sources.

Developer Vin Thomas has created a Kickstarter campaign to create Cubtab, an email app designed specifically for kids as young as 3-4 years old. "Rather than just throw them into the deep waters of the internet, we wanted to find a way to introduce them to email, messaging and the internet in a fun and safe way," he explained to KATU.com. Messages will be filtered by parents and the app won't allow for spam or advertising messaging. Kids will be able to write emails using the app, as well as include drawings, stickers and audio messages.

A school district in Alabama accidentally email the social security numbers of 2,300 substitute teachers to the human resources departments at 45 area schools. The school sent the email with the list of the teacher's names to the district schools. The attachment also included the teacher's social security numbers. The school system responded by sending a follow up email requesting recipients to delete the email and the attachment. The district also sent a letter to the substitutes advising them to place a fraud alert on their credit files.

ITProPortal interviewed Silent Circle CEO Mike Janke about why he suddenly shut down his company which used to offer an encrypted email service. While he admits that the company is working on a new solution for encrypted email, he explained the challenges with keeping emails private. "Email is fundamentally broken, the architecture of email was made 40 years ago," he told ITProPortal. "We could have been coerced by a number of governments to hand over the metadata and all that metadata is just as valuable as the content."

A federal judge has refused to dismiss a lawsuit which claims that Google's email scanning practices go against privacy laws. On Thursday, U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh said in a 43-page ruling that Gmail users can go ahead with a class-action suit against Google's scanning practices. Users claim that scanning their emails violates privacy laws. Google claims that it is done automatically in order to target ads and that no human eyes actually see the scans, and is therefore not violating user privacy.

UncommonGoods, an e-commerce company that sells unusual products had a lot of unsubscribes during the holiday season last year. During that period, the company was sending about five emails a week. To help get its cadence more on track with consumer demand, in July they began a frequency testing program with AgilOne, an email analytics provider. The move has helped the company increase its overall email open rate from 14% to 19%. In addition, the open rate among enthusiasts has increased from 78.2% to 81.3%. Not a bad way to head into the season and avoid unsubscribes.

Speciality retailer Ascena Retail Group has found that using data to create personalized email marketing messages has increased the effectiveness of the email channel. Since the company began working with digital marketing Responsys and using the Interact Marketing Cloud to power email, the company has seen email open rates improve by 70 percent and click through rates increase by 55 percent. In addition, the company has seen conversion rates increase 225 percent. Ascena also revealed that its abandoned shopping cart retargeting data has improved open rates by 275 percent.

Men's apparel store Onward Reserve has found that using better targeting in its email program nets better results. In April, the retailer tapped Windsor Circle to help target its emails by shopper demographic data. The platform provides email automation and segmentation based on the retailer's existing e-commerce data. This approach has helped the company see a greater ROI on its emails. For instance, the average open rate for the brand's Father's Day email was 35.3%, up from 25.0% in the previous year. Revenue from the company's email marketing efforts increased 278%.

Chris Dixon, a partner at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, spoke with Business Insider about how hacking is becoming worse than it has been in the past. In the video he says that hacking "is becoming a really serious problem." He explains that the problem is two-fold. For instance, the intensity has increased dramatically and there is a rise in custom attacks called spearfishing attacks. Spearfishing attacks are personalized attack. This makes it difficult for traditional security methods like looking for signatures not work, because the spam messages are too personalized.

Attorneys for Lavabit an encrypted email service provider that shut down last month have asked a federal appeals court to unseal some details from their case that are currently being kept confidential. The company shut down last month after the government got involved in its business. According to reports, whistleblower Edward Snowden used the service. Lavabit owner Ladar Levison hinted that his platform was under investigation and said that if the public knew what he knew, they wouldn't use email.