The UK's National Fraud Intelligence Bureau (NFIB) has issued a warning about a spate of spam emails that look like they come from British Gas.The messages contain malware attachments as well as malicious links and claim to be about a 'court case'. If interacted with, the emails can infect the users with TorrentLocker ransom ware.

Forty-six percent of small businesses are using email marketing, according to a new survey from Wasp Barcode which includes feedback from more than 1,000 startups. The research revealed that email was second only to social media, which 61 percent of small businesses are actively engaged with. According to the study, the majority of startups spend less than 4 percent of their revenue on marketing.

The digital systems of the City Hall in Anchorage, Alaska were shut down this week keeping employees locked out of their email accounts, phones and electronic financial systems. The agency attributed the network outage to power issues at the city data center. The city has addressed the issue and is now back online.

Return Path has introduced a new data cloud that gives email service providers, consumers and developers access to real-time email data. Users can access APIs to identify online and offline purchase data which can be applied to email through standardized formatted feeds. The cloud receives inputs from 70 mailbox and security providers representing 2.5 billion email accounts from the inboxes of more than 2 million consumers.

The Australian Post has issued a warning about scam emails targeting its customers. The spam messages claim that the recipient has to pay a fee to store a package that is waiting for them at a post office. The email includes legitimate looking logos but has spelling errors. Consumers are warned not to respond.

IBM has released a new Tone Analyzer which uses cloud-based linguistic analysis to tell you if an email or text message comes across as too angry, assertive, happy or sad. The tool, which uses the supercomputer Watson's brain to analyze a given text and provide insights into the emotional, social and writing tones present in the piece of writing.

Royal Mail, a postal service company in the United Kingdom, is seeing revenues fall this year as email takes a bite out of the parcel business. The company reported that it failed to grow sales in the first three months of its financial year as the number of letters delivered fell 5 percent and sales dropped 4 percent in the quarter that ended June 28. The company attributed the difficulties in the drop off in mail as email eats into the traditional mail marketplace.

Microsoft has introduced a new email app for iPhone users called Send. Rumored to be called Flow when chatter first began about the app back in May, the app is aimed at users who want to send quick replies to co-workers without having to open their main Outlook email app. The app is designed for short conversations and does away with subject lines and signatures.

Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson has admitted that he banned the practice of giving homeland security officials waivers to use personal email on government computers. That didn't stop him from continuing the practice and allowing 28 senior officials to use personal email at work. "When I read the story I said, 'You know whoops this is not a good practice so I should discontinue it'," he said yesterday.

After the massive data breach which exposed the data of more than 22 million government employees, The Army is not taking any chances. The group recently marked a legitimate email from CSID, the contractor hired to provide credit monitoring services after the breach, as spam. In addition, The Army issued a bulletin warning about an email phishing campaign targeting victims of the breach. Since the group realized that the email was legitimate, they have updated their spam filters.