Sir Malcolm Rifkind, the chairman of the British Parliament's intelligence committee, has defended the practice of using bulk email data to track terrorists. He said that it is worth giving up this individual liberty in order to remain secure. He also pointed out that most emails aren't read by humans but by computers. Rifkind's comments come in response to eight Internet companies that are asking the US government to reform its process of collecting bulk data via emails. These companies - Google, Apple, Facebook, Twitter, AOL, Microsoft, LinkedIn, and Yahoo - have formed an alliance called Reform Government Surveillance.

LinkedIn Corp. defended itself to a California federal judge on Friday, urging the judge to drop a proposed class action suit against the business networking company. The potential suit accuses LinkedIn of illegally accessing its users' email accounts in order to market their services to members' contacts. LinkedIn says that members consent to the practice when they sign up and are hoping that the judge will dismiss the case.

India's IT Minister Kapil Sibal is in charge of creating a new email policy to help keep government communications secure in the era of US spying. However, he himself is using Microsoft's Hotmail, a platform known to be spied upon by the NSA. Another official in the ministry admitted to using Gmail. So while the country is trying to get more secure, they are still using consumer-friendly platforms that are known to be read by the US government.

Google is pretty proud of its record on fighting spam and phishing attacks. The company published a blog post on Friday boasting about its continued efforts to stop phishing and spam emails from getting through. According to Google, the majority of non-spam email that Gmail users see in their inboxes is authenticated with standards designed to fight phishing. "91.4% of non-spam emails sent to Gmail users come from authenticated senders, which helps Gmail filter billions of impersonating email messages a year from entering our users' inboxes," explained Elie Bursztein and Vijay Eranti, Google security researchers, in the blog post.

Some Florida prisoners will soon have access to email. The new privilege will be available through a system called "SmartJailMail." The prison will set up 77 kiosks throughout its corridors on which inmates can send and read emails through approved accounts. SmartJailMail accounts will be the only permitted. Prisoners can receive email and photos, but will only be able to send emails. Like print mail, it will all be monitored by the prison.

Thirty-eight percent more email opens took place on Black Friday than on Cyber Monday this year, according to new metrics from email marketing company Movable Ink. The company revealed that the total volume of emails sent between Black Friday and Cyber Monday was up 3,085 percent year-over-year. Movable Ink also found that 59.9 percent of marketing emails sent on Thanksgiving Day were opened on phones.

W.W. Grainger Inc., one of the largest sellers of maintenance, repair and operations supply products on the web, is using abandoned shopping carts as part of its B2B sales funnel. The company takes shopping cart abandonment data and gives it to the sales team. If a lead visits Grainger.com, logs in and starts adding items to a cart before making a purchase, the salesperson will get access to this information and follow up.

Webpower, a Dutch email marketing services company, entered China in 2005, and has since signed up more than 1,000 Chinese clients. Their clients send billions of e-mails annually to consumers. According to a new report in Internet Retailer, Webpower's business has increased 50 percent annually in the past few years. Sixty percent of the company's clients are retailers. Clients include Alibaba, Yixun, Newegg.com.cn, Yintai.com, among others.

Jim Davidson, manager of marketing research at Bronto Software, has created a Holiday Lookbook, exploring the email trends that were naughty and nice this year. Davidson's favorite emails came from West Elm, who he thought did a good job at optimizing for mobile. He also enjoyed automated messages from eBags and Eddie Bauer's simple and upfront instructions on how their sales worked. Davidson wouldn't disclose which companies were on his naughty list, but he did say that emails that made recipients hunt for the call-to-action were not working.

Indiana's Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz is getting heat for reportedly accessing the files of an old email server using an email account that rom when she worked as the director of the Indiana Charter School Board that should have been closed. In doing so, her Indiana Department of Education department found a policy document sent between two members of the Center for Education and Career Innovation.