By Martin H. Bosworth
ConsumerAffairs.com
July 9, 2009
As more and more of us join Web social networks, the natural inclination is to invite our friends & family along. One particular network, Tagged.com, sends invites to everyone in your email address book when you join--whether you like it or not.
That particular practice has earned them scorn as spammers from many quarters of the tech community, and now New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has gotten in on the act. Cuomo's office today formally notified Tagged.com of its intent to sue them over what the AG calls "deceptive email marketing practices and invasion of privacy."
If you sign up with Tagged.com as a new user, you're prompted to turn over your list of email contacts to the site. Tagged then automatically searches whatever contact lists you have in your email account, and sends messages to your contacts disguised as notes from you, inviting them to view personal or private photos on the network. In order for them to view the "photos," they have to--you guessed it--sign up for Tagged.com.
"This company stole the address books and identities of millions of people," said Attorney General Cuomo. "Consumers had their privacy invaded and were forced into the embarrassing position of having to apologize to all their email contacts for Tagged's unethical--and illegal--behavior."
Although the San Francisco-based Tagged.com has been around since 2007 and has established multiple partnerships with entities ranging from Microsoft to MySpace, it's only been in recent weeks that their marketing efforts have been attracting notice--and not in a good way.
Tagged.com's practice of mailing to a user's contacts without their consent earned the networking site the dubious honor of "the most annoying Web site in the world," according to Time's Sean Gregory.
The Attorney General's lawsuit is seeking to stop Tagged.com from engaging in these fraudulent practices, as well as fines from the company. Tagged.com temporarily suspended its email marketing campaign in June, in response to user complaints and criticism, but already sent over 60 million of the deceptive emails to consumers worldwide, according to Cuomo's office.
