It has been almost a year since Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) came into effect and yet most small businesses haven't updated their email practices. According to a recent report from Constant Contact, 70 per cent of Canadian small businesses have continued to use email marketing as they were before. The research also revealed that 65 percent of marketers have the same sized lists as they did prior to the tighter rules.

Twitter has expanded its offering beyond 140 characters. Users can now send direct messages of any length and in essence send emails through the social network.

Cloud-based software firm NetSuite has completed its acquisition of Bronto Software. The company announced in April that it would acquire the email marketing software firm for $200 million. The deal expands NetSuite's marketing service offering and is the company's sixth acquisition in the space.

Google has updated the Gmail app to add Oauth support, which makes it easier to access Yahoo and Microsoft accounts through the app. Oauth is an open protocol that allows the app to connect with outside systems without sharing credentials. The tool increases security for users with features such as two-step verification and account recovery.

The Office of Personnel Management plans to email to send notifications of security threats after a massive government data breach. "The email will come from opmcio@csid.com and it will contain information regarding credit monitoring and identity theft protection services being provided to those Federal employees impacted by the data breach," the agency revealed on its website. But some security experts believe that email notifications increase risk of being leaked and landing in the hands of phishers.

Oregon Internet service provider Atmosera has fixed an issue that caused its email service EasyStreet to go offline for almost two days. The provider revealed that the outage only affected a small amount of users and was limited to those with easystreet.net email addresses. The problem stemmed from a legacy partnership with Google that has yet to be updated.

E-commerce services vendor Reflektion has released a new product for email marketers called Right Time Messaging. The tool helps marketers to create personalize emails to individual recipients up until the time the email is opened.

Sophos has acquired email security firm Reflexion Networks, in a deal whose terms were not disclosed. Reflexion offers archiving and email encryption while blocking spam. The acquisition allows Sophos to bring cloud-based email security into its Sophos Cloud technology.

Email is at the center of the FIFA scandal leading to the arrests of several of the organization's leaders. A 2007 email exchange between FIFA President Sepp Blatter and then-South African President Thabo Mbeki has surfaced which allegedly prove corruption and bribery in the organization. According to the email, FIFA officials accepted more than $10 million in bribes to support the country's World Cup bid.

Best Buy has been sending promotional email coupons and special download codes intended for one person to another, according to a report in Consumerist. The site interviewed a consumer that has been getting reward codes with full name of other people delivered to his inbox. He tried to contact Best Buy's customer service program to address the issue, but it hasn't happened yet.