Email is still the leading channel by which scammers steal money from consumers online, according to a new report from security firm RSA. The report revealed that there is a phishing attack every minute and these attacks cost global companies $4.5 billion in 2014. Email spam has gotten highly sophisticated and according to the report, 97 percent of people around the globe can't identify a phishing email.

Lawyers for the Department of Justice claim that the U.S. government has the right to demand the emails of anyone in the world if the email provider is headquartered in the U.S. The department made these assertions in an appeals court in the case between the US and Microsoft, in which the U.S. government wants access to emails stored on a server in Ireland. Microsoft said that the government has overstepped its boundaries in these demands and expressed concerns for privacy. and concerns a search warrant that the government argues should compel Microsoft to retrieve emails held on a Hotmail …

Spammers that use TorrentLocker ransomware have better delivery rates than legitimate marketers, according to Trend Micro's latest malware report. The research revealed that these emails "were seemingly delivered to a carefully selected address list with less than 1% sent to invalid ones [email addresses]." The report also revealed that 60 percent of TorrentLocker victims are based in Australia.

Google opened up native Gmail ads within AdWords last week after two years of beta testing. The platform offers marketers three templates to create ads along with an option for a custom HTML upload. There is an "image" template, a "single promotion" template and a "multi-product" that can feature multiple products after it is expanded. Marketers can target the ad type through keywords, affinity audiences, demographics, and subjects.

Oklahoma's Tobacco Helpline is going digital. The service has begun to help smokers quit via text message and email. Tobacco users can sign up to receive alerts that will help them quit smoking. "If you're going through a craving, you're having a trigger, you put in a keyword and it'll text you a tip or trick to get through that," the program's coordinator told News9.com.

Secretary of State John Kerry has hired an "email czar" to be in charge of the State Department's response to document requests which have stemmed from Hillary Clinton's email scandal. Janice Jacobs, a former diplomat, will serve as the State Department's Transparency Coordinator. In the role she is in charge of responding to Freedom of Information Act and congressional requests.

Hillary Clinton has apologized for using a private email server while she was Secretary of State. "As I look back at it now, even though it was allowed, I should have used two accounts. That was a mistake. I'm sorry about that. I take responsibility," she told ABC News in an interview. The comment comes as she is being investigated by the FBI.

Scammers almost tricked an Australian travel company into sharing $192,000 by targeting a top executive at the company. The company's email security company SMX suffered an attack and which led SMX to send out a warning to its clients. The CFO of the company saw the email and assumed it was legitimate and almost sent the wire to an overseas bank. The scammers even purchased a similar domain name and spoofed the email addresses of the security firm.

While Gmail is not officially blocked in China, the service is very difficult to use. In fact, it can take several minutes for pages to load the service on a desktop or a mobile phone even when the Wi-Fi is strong. This could make it more difficult for Google to compete in China, where Microsoft and Yahoo both have servers and follow Chinese laws.

Ninety-one percent of marketers say that email is somewhat or highly effective in terms of delivering revenue, according to a new study from The Relevancy Group. The research, which includes feedback from 300 marketing executives, also revealed that 60 percent of marketers currently use email marketing analytical services and 55 percent depend on email marketing strategic services.