While the NSA has proven itself to be quite technologically advanced in its ability to search through large volumes of emails for surveillance, the organization claims that it is difficult to search its own employee email exchanges. Last week, reporter Justin Elliott filed a freedom of information request to the NSA asking for emails between NSA employees and employees of the National Geographic Channel over a specified period of time. Since the TV station had done a puff piece on the organization, Elliott was curious about the NSA's PR efforts. Unfortunately, his request didn't get him the emails that he …

Many brands offer consumers email preference centers where they can control how often they receive emails and about what, but Twitter takes the cake. Mac Observer has created a step-by-step guide to controlling Twitter's email notifications, which can sometimes get out of control, and in their guide, they point out that Twitter has 20 different settings for emails. Users can choose to receive or not to receive emails when their tweets are retweeted, when they are mentioned in a tweet and when their tweets are marked as favorites, for example.

Any time a consumer signs up for a web service or shops online, they are required to share their email address. But with data breaches happening all the time, sometimes this practice puts consumers at risk. Abine has created a new service to help protect consumer email addresses called MaskMe. MaskMe creates fake email addresses for consumers to use online in order to hide their real information. Emails from the fake addresses are forwarded into the inboxes of a user's real account, so that users are still able to stay in contact with companies. They are just able to avoid …

Google has added a new ad feature to Gmail that essentially places display ads into a Gmail user's inbox in the disguise of an email marketing message. Not everyone is happy with this new ad format and The Atlantic Wire has written about how to disable the new ad format, pointing out that users can escape these ads by disabling the promotions tab. "The inbox tab under settings lets users pick and choose their tabs," explains The Atlantic. "So, to stop seeing promoted emails, just uncheck the promotions box."

A federal judge has ruled in favor of Chevron giving the oil company permission to subpoena Americans' private email data. This includes the email messages of more than 100 email accounts, including those of environmental activists, journalists, and attorneys. The deal is part of a long-running dispute about oil drilling damages in Ecuador. Chevron was fined $17 billion for allegedly dumping toxic waste into the Amazon, but instead of paying, the oil giant is suing more than 50 people and has subpoenaed their email exchanges.

The phrase "Free delivery" is an effective one for an email subject line, as emails that use this have a 50.7% higher open rate and a 135.4% click through rate compared to other emails, according to a new study by marketing services company Adestra. The report also revealed that emails that have the word "alert" in their subject lines have a 38.1% higher than average open rate and a 61.8% higher click through rate. Some words tip the scales in the opposite direction. Using the word "report" lowers the open rate to 23.7% below average and click through rates drop …

Google has begun turning online ads into email messages and placing them in some Gmail users' inboxes. While the company has been running ads alongside Gmail messages since it launched years ago, this is the first instance in which Google has tested turning these marketing messages into email messages that can be opened like emails and forwarded to friends. The new email ad units are served in the new "promotions" tab on Gmail and they are flagged in yellow and labeled with the word "ad," as other Google online ads are distinguished from natural content.

Apple's iOS Development Center was hacked into and developer's user data including their email addresses may have been compromised. The site went down on Thursday and Apple reported the news to its users on Sunday explaining that most of their data was encrypted on their servers, that hackers may have accessed developer's names, addresses, and email addresses. Apple is currently redesigning its servers and rebuilding its database in an attempt to avoid this kind of thing happening again. The site remains closed while Apple rebuilds.

Email marketing services company SDL has upgraded its Intelligent Marketing Suite and added a feature that will allow marketers to run videos in email marketing campaigns. The video feature lets marketers add existing videos, as well as record new ones and send them along in their email marketing messages. The new video functionality is part of SDL's entire revamp of its Email Manager suite, which also includes new audio capabilities.

As Salesforce.com's acquisition of ExactTarget has closed, investors are speculating about other companies in the email marketing space that could be worthy of purchase. Responsys is garnering a lot of attention in this arena. During the last quarter, Responsys posted an increase of 23% in revenue year over year. In addition the company has increased its average contract length from 17.2 months in 2011-12 to 20 months in 2012-13. In addition, the company is growing its business overseas and has increased its revenue share internationally from 18% in Q1 2012 to 21%in Q1 2013.