Portland State University has plans to cut off email access to members of the faculty union that join the planned strike next month. Union leaders claim that locking professors out of their PSU email accounts is illegal, claiming that striking is protected by the law. An administrative law judge is currently investigating the legality of the move.

Amazon has sent out an email to Kindle customers letting them know about a refund coming their way. The email is part of a $166 million legal settlement with book publishers over eBook price fixing. The email explains how much the customer is owed based on their past purchases. The credit is automatically included in the customer's account and will be applied to their next book purchase.

Thursday is the most popular day for marketers to send emails, while Saturday and Sunday are the least popular, according to a new report from email services firm TrackMaven. The company examined more than 2,000 email lists and more than 93,000 emails to determine trends in email marketing. The research also revealed that most marketing emails hit the inbox around 12pm.

Hawaiian state senator Russell Ruderman has launched an email campaign seeking to urging his colleagues from reappointing a member of the state Board of Agriculture. "If any of you share my revulsion at Richard Ha being appointed to the State Ag Board, it's not too late to do something," he wrote in an email blast. Ruderman and Ha are at odds over genetically modified crops and geothermal energy. In his email, Ruderman encourages recipients to send the email virally. "Please spread the word," he wrote. "If each senator gets 100 emails in opposition this will not fly."

Email encryption services firm Virtru is now providing encryption for Microsoft's Office 365 and Outlook Desktop email services. The company already supports email encryption for Google's Gmail, Yahoo's Mail, and Microsoft's Outlook webmail.

After news circulated last week about Microsoft hacking into a tech blogger's email to stop a leak, The Guardian reporter Alex Hern has revealed that Apple, Google and Yahoo can also take such actions if they want to. In fact, these companies build it into their user terms of agreement. Gmail users promise "to acknowledge and agree that Google may access... your account information and any Content associated with that account... in a good faith belief that such access... is reasonably necessary to... protect against imminent harm to the... property... of Google." Apple requires permission to "without liability to you, …

Former President Jimmy Carter does not use email because he is pretty sure that the National Security Agency is reading it. Carter revealed this to NBC's Andrea Mitchell, in an interview for "Meet the Press" which aired yesterday. He called the NSA's actions an abuse of power. "As a matter of fact, you know, I have felt that my own communications are probably monitored," he said in the interview. "And when I want to communicate with a foreign leader privately, I type or write the letter myself, put it in the post office, and mail it."

Microsoft has made its privacy policy more strict after revealing that they read a journalist's email in order to stop a leak. The new rules prevent the company from reading a customer's emails without getting approval from two independent legal teams. However, Microsoft has defended its action against the journalist.

Twitter has rolled out a new 'week in review' email feature. The weekly newsletter includes a user's metrics including such things as how many replies they received, how many @mentions they got, as well as how many people viewed their email.

The Canadian government is looking to consolidate its email system across agencies by the end of the 2014 to 2015 fiscal year. The upgrade will incorporate 63 legacy systems that are currently being used into one platform. Canada currently employs about 263,000 civil servants. Each of these employees would be given an email account though the new platform.