The Hill
Tech giants including Google, Microsoft, AOL and Yahoo are calling on congressional leaders to take action and allow a vote to proceed on the Email Privacy Act. The bill would update the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act, which currently governs email privacy and allows law enforcement to search emails without a warrant if the message is more than 180 days old. The bill has supporters on both sides of the aisle. Yet it was introduced last summer and has yet to move forward to a vote.
RT
A text file containing the login and password details of 4.93 million Google accounts, which includes access to a user's Gmail account, was posted to a Russian Bitcoin Security board forum this week. The forum's administrators have removed the passwords from the document, but the logins remain. According to the person that shared the file, at least 60 percent of the passwords were valid. One user even identified their data on the list.
TechCrunch
MailTime is a new email app launching today as part of TechCrunch's Startup Battlefield. The app, which enters a crowded marketplace of email apps, is designed to make emails more like text messages. The idea is to redesign the inbox experience for the mobile phone to make it less cluttered and focus on the most important content in a message. The tool strips out information such as subject lines and email signatures to make the message more like a chat. The idea is to make messages easier and quicker to read on the phone.
Gallup
About a third of full-time workers report to frequently checking email outside of normal working hours, and those employees are 17 percent more likely to report having better overall lives than people that report to never checking email outside work, according to a new report from Gallup. The research also found that people who spend seven or more hours checking email outside of work hours are more likely to rate their overall lives highly than those who spend zero hours checking email outside of work. However, about half of the workers that check email outside of work report being more …
TownHall.com
The White House sent out an email reporting on the economy this week with a tongue-in-cheek nod to the Democratic party. The email promoted economic improvements during Obama's presidency and led with the headline "Slide to the left." The note went out on Monday night, just in time to promote Tuesday's primary elections in states across the nation.
Inside Higher Education
Email addresses from prestigious universities have shown up for sale on Taobao, a large Chinese-based auction site. Email addresses from schools in the U.S., Canada, Denmark, China and Switzerland are among some of the university's whose names are being used for these email addresses. The accounts can cost anywhere from $.16 to $390 depending on the address. The IT security company Palo Alto Networks made the discovery and contacted some of the sellers to find that many of the addresses belong to an active student at the university. The security firm has notified Taobao about the issue.
Mashable
Actress Fran Drescher has married V.A. Shiva Ayyadurai, an early tech pioneer who is often called the inventor of email. The marriage comes soon after Ayyadurai celebrated the 36th anniversary of creating a system that he has called "EMAIL" at the age of 14 when he was working at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey. Ayyadurai's invention differs quite a bit from how email actually operates today, so his title as the inventor of email has raised some controversy.
The Telegraph
British ticket seller BH Live Tickets has become the victim of an email scam. The spam email that has been circulating today, claims to be a confirmation email for tickets to see Peter Pan. The email claims that the e-tickets are attached to the email and encourages users to download a PDF in order to print their tickets. However there is not attachment on the email. Instead, the email directs users to download Adobe Acrobat Reader in order to access the PDF. The email contains a link to the supposed Adobe reader, but the link contains a zip file which …
GMA News Online
A spam email is in circulation among Spanish-language speakers which claims that Colombian pop singer Shakira has died. The email comes with a Word document attached which contains malicious macro. Recipients are encouraged to download the document to find out more about Shakira's car accident and to obtain exclusive details. Downloading the document will install malware on the user's computer.
ZDNet
Marketing services firm Tibco has introduced a new cloud-based marketing platform to the mid market audience called Engage. The tool allows marketers to track analytics in real time and integrate this data across messaging channels including email, social behavior and in-store purchases, among others. The tool stems from Tibco's acquisition of Loyalty Lab, a company that specialized in loyalty programs, and the company is already working with retailers including North Face.