Tagged.com Sued for Spamming

Finally...a lawsuit we are happy to report on. We get so much spam from Tagged, it's ridiculous.

Now, social networking site Tagged.com has been sued by the State of New York for "deceptive e-mail marketing practices and invasion of privacy."

New York’s Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, says that Tagged illegally tries to attract new members by duping visitors into giving out their personal information and address books. The company then uses that info to send more invitations. These invitations appear in your inbox and look as though a friend has sent a link to pictures posted on the site.

"This company stole the address books and identities of millions of people," Cuomo stated. "Consumers had their privacy invaded and were forced into the embarrassing position of having to apologize to all their e-mail contacts for Tagged’s unethical — and illegal — behavior. This very virulent form of spam is the online equivalent of breaking into a home, stealing address books and sending phony mail to all of an individual’s personal contacts. We would never accept this behavior in the real world, and we cannot accept it online."

Tagged CEO Greg Tseng said in a blog post that other social networking websites use similar tactics, however they have decided that their "invite your friends" verbiage is confusing so they have stopped sending out those e-mails.

The company claims to be the 3rd-largest social networking site after Facebook and MySpace. Hmm, maybe those spammy tactics work.