British telecom BT Is experiencing an email outage. Many customers of the service have taken to Twitter to complain that they can't access their email accounts. Users said that they have been receiving error messages all day. Some of these customers have been told to check their email again over the next couple of days.

Iterable, a startup founded by Twitter and Google graduates, have launched a new email marketing feature called Workflow that aims to make it easier for marketers to integrate A/B testing into their core systems. This new feature allows marketers to build out multi-step and drip campaigns which include A/B testing using a drag and drop editor. The tool is available for cheaper than the competition.

The Central Intelligence Agency wants to be able to destroy email messages sent by non-senior officials and The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) has tentatively approved this request. The CIA submitted the request on August 18th claiming that these email accounts are unlikely to contain permanent records and that these emails are captured through other CIA systems even if they were needed. The request is now open for public comments.

Comedian Spike Feresten has had a little fun with email scammers. After placing an ad in Porsche Panorama magazine, seeking out a car part for his vintage vehicle, email scammers got in touch claiming to have the part and seeking money to produce it. The emails looked very sketchy and they were obviously spammers. Feresten had a little fun at their expense, stringing them along and making them think that he would play their game.

Email delivery services firm Return Path has been awarded a new patent to measure inbox placement and determine whether email marketing messages have landed in an inbox or spam trap. The U.S. Patent #8,719,356 B2 patent allows the company to use multiple data sources to monitor email delivery rates in order to determine inbox placement rates.

Email startup Inbox is launching an open source email app to make it easier for developers to use the email app. The company, which was founded by Dropbox and MIT graduates, has also revealed the pricing for its hosted Inbox API. In addition, the company has expanded its app from Gmail integration to include support for Yahoo, Hotmail/Outlook.com and Microsoft Exchange.

Mark Anthony Townsend, an Arkansas man who plead guilty to selling stolen email passwords, has been sentenced to five months of house arrest and a $10,000 fine. Townsend plead guilty back in April to running a website called needapassword.com from May 2002 to June 2013. The site allowed its customers to illegally purchase passwords to other people's email accounts.

A German data protection agency has warned Google to ask for a user's permission in order to create data profiles. The agency demands that users be able to decide for themselves which data is used for consumer profiling. Google has not historically disclosed to German citizens how it aggregates data across its services including Gmail, Android phones and search. The move comes as Google has been facing stricter regulations from European governments in regards to consumer privacy.