Jamie Estrada, a former campaign manager for the New Mexico Governor Susana Martinez, was indicted on federal charges of hacking into the campaign's email system and allegedly stealing emails sent between the governor, her staff and her supporters. U.S. Attorney Kenneth Gonzales announced the charges against Estrada on Thursday. Prosecutors claim that Estrada used a password and username to change the governor's campaign organization's login details after Martinez took office as governor in 2011.

Landing pages that host $500 giveaway contests generate 700% more email subscribers than landing pages not running contests, according to a ra new study by contest company Incentivibe. The report, which looked at data from March 15-April 15 from three million visitor interactions on 100 websites that ran monthly giveaways, revealed that Sundays were the busiest day for consumers to sign up as email subscribers, and Wednesdays had the lowest rate.

Doggyloot.com, a dog products e-commerce company, introduced a new abandoned shopping cart tactic to its email marketing program back in March and is seeing good results. The company sends emails to customers that have added items to their online but leave the site without completing the transaction. They send the emails an hour after the customer has disappeared. These emails are driving an increase in conversions. The company reported this week that 14% of consumers that open the abandoned cart email message click through and revisit the site and 12% of those who click through complete their purchase.

Marketing technology services company Responsys introduced a new cloud-based marketing service last week, in a move expand its business beyond its email service provider roots. Responsys' new Interact Marketing Cloud helps marketers create marketing programs that incorporate demographic, campaign response, behavior, social and preference data into a single campaign management tool.

Christopher Kojm, the chairman of the US National Intelligence Council (NIC), had his personal email hacked into by the hacker that goes by the name Guccifer. Guccifer accessed email exchanges between Kojm and 9/11 Commission members, as well as emails that contained his banking information, as well as documents covering the latest Obama administration's transition earlier this year. This is not the first attempt to access the private communications of a political figure by the hacker. Guccifer has also claimed to hack into the accounts of other public people including US Senator Lisa Murkowski, General Colin Powell, and Sidney Blumenthal, …

British Defense Secretary Philip Hammond is pushing to give police and security services in the UK access to the email and social media records during criminal investigations in what he claims will help prevent terrorists causing harm on Britain's streets. Hammond added his comments this week to support Home Secretary Theresa May who is trying to resurrect the Communications Data Bill -- controversial legislation that would require internet companies to retain records of emails and social media messages for a year and let police and security agencies access the data, but not the content of messages.

Texas could be the first state in the U.S. to pass an email privacy regulation that would require law enforcement to get a warrant in order to access a citizen's email. The new bill (HB 2268) would update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) which only requires federal law enforcement to obtain warrants only when they are accessing recent emails. The bill has been sent to Texas Governor Rick Perry.

Google has redesigned the Gmail inbox to make it easier for users to sort through emails on their desktop computers, as well as on mobile devices. The new version of Gmail automatically groups incoming emails into five different categories -- primary, social, promotions, updates and forums -- in order to give users a quick idea of what is coming into their mailbox. Google explained that the update came from user demand and it is designed to put users back in control of their inboxes.

Email marketers may be tempted to use no-reply email addresses when sending out messages, but Michael Linthorst, CEO of Copernica Marketing Software, argues that they shouldn't. In a piece penned for eConsultancy, he lists a few reasons that this is a bad idea, including that no-reply addresses lead to more spam complaints and that consumers won't add a no-reply address to their address book.

More than half of teens are willing to share their email addresses with social networking sites, according to a recent study by Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project. For the report, Pew interviewed 802 12-18 year olds about their digital habits in phone calls during the summer of 2012, and found that 53% of teens were willing to share their email address with social networks. This is up from 29 percent in 2006.