It’s no secret that Facebook has an.. interesting … view of user privacy. In fact, Facebook CEO Mark Zucker recently suggested that Facebook users (should) have no expectation of privacy. Now to add insult to the complete-lack-of-privacy injury, starting a few days ago, Facebook applications now have permission to grab your email address – that is to require that you divulge your email address before you can use their application.

Two watchdog groups – Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and the National Security Archive – have announced that the Obama administration has uncovered 22 million pieces of email that were sent under the Bush administration, and that had gone ‘missing’. The discovery was made pursuant to – and has lead to the settling of – lawsuits filed by both groups against the Executive Office of the President over the Bush administration’s alleged failure to install an adequate record-keeping system for electronic records, including email, as required by Federal law.

As text messaging grows ever more popular, you may be wondering how to send text messages to cell phones via the Internet or, put another way, how to send a text message to a cell phone by email. It’s actually very easy to email a text message to a cell phone – in fact it’s as easy as sending any other email – you just need to know the email address of the cell phone.

The City of Los Angeles will be paying Google $7 million to allow the city to move email hosting for all 30,000 of Los Angeles city workers to Gmail. That’s right – what tens of millions get for free, Los Angeles will be paying a cool seven million for. Of course presumably by paying for Gmail premium, they will be getting a few other services, like the ability to call in for tech support during normail business hours.

Amber Duick was minding her own business when she suddenly started receiving a series of scary emails from a Sebastian Bowler – a stranger who seemed not only to know who Duick is, but to know how to find her. Indeed, he knew her previous address, and generally where she lives now, and, he said, he was coming to her house to hide from the police. Amber was terrified – even sleeping with a machete by her bed and insisting that her boyfriend keep mace and a club by his side. Terrified, that is, until she learned that it was all an elaborate marketing stunt being carried out on behalf of Toyota. Toyota’s response? She asked for it, they say, by opting in to their marketing emails.

Even Bill Gates has been driven beyond frustration with the Windows website. The below email, from Bill Gates himself, takes several Microsoft managers to task for, what Gates himself calls “crap” and the “absolute mess” that is the Windows website (lack of) usability, particularly with respect to downloads.

The Waledec botnet is using spam that claims that “Obama Quits”, explaining that “Barack Obama abandoned sinking ship” and that Obama doesn’t want any more to be president, in order to lure unsuspecting users to add their PCs to its group of zombied computers that it uses to do its dirty work. Other subject lines include “Who Will Be Our President Now?”, “End time for the USA”, and “Haven’t you heard latest news about our president-elect?”

It’s been a year and a half, almost to the day, that the Virginia Tech Massacre happened. On April 16th, 2007, VA Tech student Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 innocent students and faculty over the course of two hours. Now emails released from Cho’s email account at VA Tech – both emails to Cho, and his own email responses – have been released and are available to read. These emails show cries for help, and an insight into a troubled students. Could the VA Tech massacre have been avoided with the right intervention?

Many accounts of what we’re about to tell you are saying that it illustrates the dangers of email and autoresponders – but we think that it’s really about the danger of not using your brain. It all started in Wales, when the Swansea council needed an English phrase translated into Welsch for a new road sign.

inSpot.org is a website which lets you anonymously notify someone by email that they have been exposed to a sexually transmitted disease (STD) such as a venereal disease (VD) or even HIV / AIDS. Even if they haven’t.

The next time somebody tells you that they don’t understand what the big deal is about spam, you can tell them this story. Thousands and thousands of Virgin Media customers went without email service for two full days after a spam run took down the email servers of their email service provider, Tucows.

Under a law which takes effect next week, Nevada businesses must start encrypting their email, or face a penalty.

If you receive a death threat email, you’re in good company. The so-called “Hitman email” scam has made a comeback. Around since at least 2006, the content of the death threat email has evolved some, but the general gist of it remainds the same: the Hitman email claims that someone wants you dead, that the Hitman email sender has been hired to kill you, and that if you come up with a sufficient amount of money, they will spare your life.

Researchers in Germany have come out with a very interesting study about what your choice of email address says about you. We’ve already talked about what the domain of your email address says about you (such as do you send from aol.com, hotmail.com, yourowndomain.com, etc.), but this new study looks specifically at the username side of your email address. Such as, are you “onehottie@”, “buttoneddown@”, or “uptight@”? In fact, the title subject is honey.bunny77@hotmail.de (that is the German arm of Hotmail).

If you retrieve your email via POP from Gmail, you may on occasion find that Gmail completely rejects your password. Now, having Gmail rejecting your POP password can be very disconcerting, not to mention frustrating! Your mail client keeps prompting you for your Gmail password, you keep entering the password that you know is the right password, and Gmail keeps rejecting it. It’s enough to drive you crazy.