Female students at Eisenhower Senior High School in Texas are being required to email a photo of their prom dress to the school to get approval to wear the frock. "All girls, Eisenhower student or not, must send in a photo of themselves in their prom dress (front & back) to be approved before they purchase it. The email must also include full name & student ID," explains the school's website. "They can send photos in to ikeprom@aldine-isd.org." The rule was posted on the school's website, but the faculty failed to email parents about this new rule.

China's Criminal Investigation Bureau (CIB) has warned Gmail users to be aware of spam emails which claim to come from the CIB. These fake messages claim that the recipient's account had suspicious login attempts. The email encourages account users to reset their passwords by clicking a link provided in the email, which goes to a malicious site.

Raghuram Rajan, the Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, received a threatening email this week, which claim to come from ISIS. Police are currently investigating the email, which threaten to kill the Governor unless he sends money to the group. There is a chance the email was a hoax, but authorities are investigating to determine the source.

Email marketing service provider PostUp has partnered with Return Path. The Austin-based ESP has integrated Return Path's email data platform into its service in order to help marketing clients optimize deliverability and analyze the results.

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange defended the site's publication of hundreds of thousands of leaked Sony emails this week. "It is newsworthy and at the center of a geo-political conflict. It belongs in the public domain," he said. "WikiLeaks will ensure it stays there." The site published searchable database of these emails.

SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White admitted this week that the agency hasn't been using subpoenas to get citizen email data from ISP. Her disclosure came as a surprise to privacy advocates who have accused the SEC of standing in the way of updates to email privacy law, which would require law enforcement to get a subpoena to access email records. Currently, the 1986 Electronic Communications Privacy Act governs email rules and does not require such permission.

Microsoft has increased the maximum email size to 150 MB in Office 365. While the company has been pushing for file sharing on its OneDrive, thus alleviating the need for large email sizes. However, sometimes cloud storage is not accessible and this presents the need to send larger files via email.

Email infrastructure services firm Message Systems has introduced a new email delivery platform called SparkPost. The platform, which compete with the likes of SendGrid and Mandrill, allows users to pay as they go, which gives small businesses the tools once reserved for larger players. Small businesses pay $80 a month to send 100,000 emails and larger companies can pay $900 for 2 million messages.

Connecticut court officials have issued a warning about a spate of spam emails alleging to come from the "State Court." "This is to inform you to appear in the Court on the April 20 for your case hearing," reads the email. "Please, do not forget to bring all the documents related to the case. Note: The case may be heard by the Judge in your absence if you do not come. The court notice is attached to this email." These attachments will cause a virus on the user's computer if downloaded. The subject line reads, "Notice of Appearance in Court …

Wikileaks has published a database of Sony emails and documents that were leaked late last year. The database includes 173,132 emails and 30,287 documents, as well as personal information from some employees including home addresses, personal phone numbers and social security numbers. The databases features a search functionality which makes it user friendly. The publication and its accessibility raises new levels of concerns over online security.