Fifty-four percent of email users make use of some kind of filter to automatically sort their email messages, according to a new report from HubSpot and Litmus. The "Science of Email 2014" report, which includes both self-reported behaviors among email users as well as observations from marketers, also revealed that more than 50 percent of consumers use a separate spam filter to sift commercial email messages.

The internal email system of Brazil's foreign ministry has been hacked into, though the intruders were unable to get access to confidential government documents and cables, according to the ministry. The ministry revealed that any sensitive information is encrypted, which foiled the thieves. Still, the organization closed its email system for the day as security teams investigated the attack.

Scammers have taken advantage of the eBay data breach and have begun emailing users pretending to be from eBay. The emails reveal discuss the breach and urge recipients to change their passwords. The emails contain malicious links to a fake sites pretending to be the auction site but are used to collect new passwords from users.

Mazda used social and email to help promote its first all-digital pre-sale event for limited-edition MX-5 Miata cars. The car maker announced the sale back in April at a trade show and through active social messaging online. The messaging led to a microsite where Mazda collected email addresses. They collected 1,600 email addresses through the effort. In May, Mazda emailed the list to announce the pre-sale and generated 250 sales leads in the first 10 minutes of the promotion.

Email deliverability firm Message Bus has updated its cloud-based email platform for high volume email marketers. The upgrade will allow marketers to segment emails by based on the type of email is being sent be it transactional, marketing or social and then send these different messages via separate channels. The goal is to make it easier for senders to avoid delivery problems.

The People's ID Bot Project and UK-based ad agency Abundance did an experiment to show how fraudsters can take advantage of consumers just by having their email address and Google. The group set up a team of actors in a London bar who solicited patrons to join their mailing list. The team them used the email addresses to do background searches on the people on the list to collect private information about them. They learned enough about the people to convince them that they had known them for years. Experian documented the whole experiment in video.

The Federal Trade Commission is urging Congress to enact legislation that would require companies to disclose more information about how they collect and use data about consumers. This could make regulations tighter around email marketing, as brands may be required to give consumers more control. In addition, legislation would require that consumers have more access to inferences that are being made about them based on their interactions online. The recommendation comes as part of a report issued Tuesday by the FTC. It follows a White House report which calls for a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights.

Canada's new anti-spam rules go into effect on July 1st, and breaking the rules can result in a huge fine. Beginning Jan. 15, 2015, companies that do not follow the rules, can be fined up to $10 million. The new rules requires express consent from consumers.

Epsilon has integrated Cloudera's open-source software Hadoop to add an advanced segmentation capability to its Agility Harmony marketing platform. The new integration allows marketers to check out real-time audience segmentation based on structured, unstructured and semi-structured data. Epsilon claims this data can be made actionable within minutes.

The White House mistakenly revealed the identify of a top CIA agent in Afghanistan. The person's name ended up on a list of people that Barack Obama planned to visit in the country over Memorial Day weekend that was emailed by the White House press office to a distribution list of more than 6,000 people in the US media.