Contrary to news reports, Microsoft does not allow the National Security Agency to access its customers' email accounts directly, Microsoft General Counsel Brad Smith wrote in a blog post on Tuesday. Recent news reports have suggested that the online giant was helping the NSA get around encryption in order to spy on Outlook.com email accounts. "We do not provide any government with direct access to emails or instant messages," Smith wrote.

Salesforce.com has completed its acquisition of digital marketing services firm ExactTarget. The company announced the acquisition last month. The acquisition expands Salesforce's digital marketing tools, bringing tools for building email, mobile and social media campaigns under its umbrella. Salesforce purchased ExactTarget for $ 2.5 billion.

Salesforce.com has taken out a $300 million loan from Bank of America in order to finance its acquisition of email and digital marketing services ExactTarget. The loan will tighten up Salesforce.com's cash resources, and TechCrunch argues that this is likely a signal that the company won't be making any more acquisitions any time soon. Salesforce completed the loan last Thursday, the day the deal with ExactTarget closed. The contract stipulates that the loan will be paid off by the end of 2016.

Birdseye, a new email organization app, helps iPad users organize their inboxes in an intuitive way. The app presents totally rendered emails in a stream of that scroll horizontally. Users can click on an email to see a fullscreen view. The app has context-sensitive tools. For example, a mailing list email will give readers the option to unsubscribe or to click through to the sender's website. In addition, a Linkedin invitation will allow users to accept or ignore the invitation, as well as to open the request within the Linkedin app.

Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig has revealed that he has never sent an email and never plans to. The MLB head made this revelation at a press conference on Monday. "I've never sent an email, and I never will," he said to Eric Fisher, a reporter for the Sports Business Journal, who in turn tweeted the information. While he doesn't use email, Selig does reportedly own an iPhone.

Yahoo is getting ready to reuse unused YahooIDs and the email addresses associated with them. Beginning today, Internet users can request up to five email addresses. If the address is available to be recycled, meaning that it hasn't been used in more than a year, it will be doled out to the first user who requested it. At this point, users can only get one recycled address. Yahoo says that it is implementing new security measures in a move to prevent identity fraud. This includes a new email header that verifies account creation dates which prevents a user from accessing …

Bolivian President Evo Morales has reportedly quit using email because he claims that U.S. intelligence agencies have hacked into the email accounts of the nation's senior leaders. "It was recommended to me that I not use email, and I've followed suit and shut it down," he explained in a speech on Saturday.

Chevron will be given access to the emails of environmentalists, journalists, and attorneys, as part of a settlement of a long-running dispute about the damage caused by oil drilling 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, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and EarthRights International (ERI).

Average email open rates grew 18.6% year-over-year to 31% in Q1 2013, according to a new report from Epsilon. Mobile email adoption is helping increase engagement metrics. Click rates were up as well, averaging 5.1% during the quarter. The survey also revealed that triggered messages, which include welcome emails, order confirmations and abandoned shopping cart messages, were up 41.1% year-on-year. In fact, triggered messages now make up 3.3% of total email volume.

Almost half of b-to-b marketers (47%) said that improving their email programs relied on increasing their ability to deliver relevant content to specific segments of their audiences, according to a new report from BtoB Magazine. BtoB's "Email Marketing: An Established Channel Evolves," revealed that 43% of b-to-b marketers rely on lead nurturing, 30% rely on list segmentation, 25% rely on increasing personalization and 24% depend on analyzing data. The report also showed that content is a challenge among b-to-b marketers with 58% of respondents facing hurdles in this area. In addition, 40% of those surveyed said that perceived difficulties in …