The Louisiana House passed a bill on Monday that would prevent email and social users in Louisiana from having to share their personal account login information with employers, educators and school officials. House Bill 314, which is sponsored by state Rep. Ted James a democrat from Baton Rouge, passed the house unanimously, 87-0. The bill is headed to the state's Senate for further debate.

In a move to help marketers avoid lawsuits for marketing without permission, digital marketing services firm Responsys has introduced a new tool called Interact Preference. The technology is designed to unify and manage customer preferences and permissions across every point of interaction, be it an email address or a mobile app. The tool helps marketers collect customer data such as purchase history, demographic and preferences and combines it into one database which is then used when creating new messaging.

Email wedding invitations are catching on in India, as young couples are using the digital communication form to let people know about their nuptials. These brides and grooms explain that email is cheaper, more ecofriendly and offers the ability to create interactive features like videos. Some people think that email is too informal to use as a wedding invite, but that stigma is slowly going away as younger people are making email invites more common.

IT research company Gartner called email marketing services company ExactTarget "visionary" as part of its evaluation of lead management software tools that help companies track new sales leads. ExactTarget got into the lead management business last year by acquiring Pardot, a marketing automation company.

Cosmetics company Bare Escentuals is going tour to promote a new line of products and the company is using digital marketing to help get the word out about its events in six different cities around the country. Consumers can visit the campaign's microsite to sign up for email notifications to get an alert about when the tour is visiting their area. These emails also include bareMinerals' social sharing buttons so that customers will help spread the word.

LivingSocial, a Groupon-like service that offers deals based on location, has been hacked compromising the account information of 50 million people. Hackers were able to steal the names, birthdays, email addresses, and encrypted passwords of LivingSocial customers. The company said that credit card information was not compromised. The company is also encouraging customers to change their passwords.

Members of the Undergraduate Council at Harvard are taking steps to clarify the university's email privacy policy for its undergraduates in order to make students more aware of its policies. According to the student handbook, systems administrators can access a student's email data "when it is necessary to maintain or prevent damage to systems or to ensure compliance with other University rules." Students are often unaware of these rules, however, and the council would like to change that.

Guitar maker Fender is using data to make its email marketing messages more personalized. Working with email marketing services company Knotice, the instrument manufacturer has begun combining its data with its messaging. The technology lets Fender track a shopper's actions across multiple devices, such as from its e-commerce site to its mobile app. Customer data is then used to create a more personalized experience in messaging.

Earlier this week, the Associated Press's Twitter account and used to send out false messages about a supposed attack on The White House. The hack came after an AP employee opened what is known as a "spear-fishing" spam message. The way it works is that a spammer sends an email that appears to be coming from someone you know with a link that seems legitimate. In the case of the AP, the email appeared to be from a colleague and the link was to The Washington Post, so it sounded legitimate. But it was a phishing email and compromised the …

Mailbox for iPhone, the popular app that helps users organize their email inboxes, is working on an app for the iPad and has plans to create Android and desktop apps in the future. As TechCrunch points out, the iPad app is likely to come first since the company seems to already have it in the works, and the other apps have been described merely as, "on the roadmap."