Hashtags aren't just for social media anymore. In fact, they have been making their way into emails, including the email subject line. These tools are perfect for email because of their ability to get a message across in a limited number of characters, which is more effective for email. Subject lines with 6-10 words garner the highest open rates, according to a recent study from Retention Science.

The Superintendent of a Michigan school has said that parent's email addresses will no longer be used to promote local issues after receiving complaints from parents about unsolicited emails. The email in question was sent by a group seeking to recall three school trustees. The mailer obtained the email list via a Freedom of Information Act request.

Indiana Republican Senator Dennis Kruse is trying to pass a bill that would require all emails and text messages sent between students and school employees to also be sent to parents and the school's principal. The idea is to police the communications between people at the school with students to prevent inappropriate relationships. The messages would have to be archived for two years.

Spam messages in circulation in Australia are capitalizing on current fears of another terrorist attack. The emails, which claim to be from ISIS, include an alleged outline of attack plans for 2015. Recipients are encouraged to download an attachment to find out locations for these supposed plans. The attachments contain a malicious code that allows the hackers to take over the user's computer.

Consumers complain that they get too many emails on their phone, according to a new report from Liveclicker and The Relevancy Group. The survey, which includes feedback from 1,000 US consumers, revealed that 44 percent of consumers said that get too many emails. Thirty-seven percent of consumers revealed that the emails are irrelevant and 32 percent said that mobile emails are too small to read and interact with.

Executives Dennis Mortensen and Alex Poon were looking for a way to make scheduling meetings via email more effective. So they created the X.ai system, a virtual personal assistant that comes with its own email address. The tool, which is currently in beta, is accessible through an app. Rather than having the user involved in a thread of multiple emails, the virtual assistant uses data to determine availability and schedule meetings and helps the user clean up their inbox for more important messages.

Crowd funding site Kickstarter has debuted a new email newsletter called The Happening. The editorial product promises: "The latest in art, culture, and technology delivered straight to your inbox." The site sends emails to its creators and backers. Last year also, Kickstarter had more than 3.3 million donors.

The FBI had a starring role in the NSA's email surveillance program. According to a newly declassified Justice Department report, the F.B.I. began reviewing unsuspecting email accounts for the NSA through the PRISM program. The agency also developed the protocols used to make sure ensure that the email accounts in question didn't belong to U.S. citizens.

Motivational speaker James Clear has 100,000 email subscribers to his email newsletter of self-help business articles. The speaker worked hard to build up such a strong list. In fact, it took years of blogging for other sites, developing his personal voice and launching his own site with a consistent publishing schedule to gain such a strong following. The blog itself has 200,000 monthly readers, a number of whom pay $50 for online courses that he teaches.

Postal customers have been receiving spam emails claiming to be from the United States Postal Service. The fake emails claim that recipients had a package ready for pick up at the post office. The email, which includes a USPS logo, instructs users to click on a link to get new information. The link contains malware which ends up on a user's computer.