Phishing spam is on the rise, according to Symantec. According to Symantec's report State of Spam May 2008, which examines spam trends from April, 80% of all e-mail from the month was spam. Of these spam messages, 19% were either fraud (phishing) or scam e-mails, which encourage recipients to give away personal information.

Comcast has teamed up with Return Path to offer a new complaint feedback loop for e-mail senders. Now, mailers who send to Comcast users can use the new feedback loop to see if recipients are reporting their messages as spam.

E-mail may play a key role in Mother's Day marketing this year, as 88% of small business owners that plan to market for the holiday plan to use e-mail to do so, according to Constant Contact.

The first felony spam conviction in the US will be revisited, calling into question laws applied to commercial vs. noncommercial spam. The Supreme Court of Virginia on April 28 agreed to a limited rehearing of its decision against Jeremy D. Jaynes, who was sentenced to nine years in prison for violating Virginia's 2003 Anti-Spam Act in February.

E-mail service provider Message Labs has reported an outbreak in Olympic-related spam. Thirteen separate Olympic-themed attacks have been intercepted by MessageLabs, targeted at businesses across several different data-rich industries and regions and including such subject lines as "The Beijing 2008 Torch Relay" and "National Olympic Committee and Ticket Sales Agents."

Time and time again I discover that one of the main obstacles to creating effective, visually engaging, brand-propelling and, most important, results-driven e-mails is the creative team behind them.

Consumers are seizing control of their e-mail experience, according to a new report by Merkle that found 88% of consumers feel "mostly or completely in control of their inboxes," up nine points from 2004.

Economic woes indicate an increase in coupon usage, according to a survey by ICOM Information & Communications LP (ICOM). The survey was conducted via e-mail using a random sample of 40,000 US households from ICOM's 26 million Shopper's Voice database.

Spammers are taking advantage of the popularity of social networking sites, by sending malicious e-mails feign­ing social intentions, according to a new report by Symantec.

On Monday, March 31, Vertis Communications Inc. reported a $327 million loss for 2007 and hired financial advisory firm Lazard Ltd. to help implement a financial restructuring plan. The move comes after Vertis evaluated its $246.5 million in goodwill during the fourth quarter of 2007 and "determined that, because of the company's debt load, the value of the $246.5 million should be written off to assure technical compliance with the accounting rules," according to Mike DuBose, chairman/CEO of Vertis.