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Internet Third Largest Social Networking Site Sued for Invasion of Privacy, Identity Theft
Jason Mick (Blog) - July 13, 2009 8:53 AM

21 comment(s) - last by tmouse.. on Jul 14 at 8:45 AM

Social networking site Tagged reportedly abused its users information and posed as them, sending spam to their friends. The site is being sued by New York's Attorney General and may face similar charges in other states for identity theft and invasion of privacy. (Source: Tagged.com)

Tagged just got tagged with some serious charges

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo looks to send a stern warning to social networking businesses -- respect your users' privacy or face charges. Last Thursday, Cuomo filed charges against social networking site Tagged over alleged invasion of privacy and identity theft.

Mr. Cuomo states, "This company stole the address books and identities of millions of people. 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."

Tagged is no small fish -- with over 80 million reported users, it bills itself as the "third largest" social networking site on the web, behind MySpace and Facebook. According to Alexa.com, the site is the 81st largest site on the web and has been on a steady rise over the last year after entry at 300th.

Reportedly, though, that rise was driven by illegal tactics. The site allegedly tricked many of its users into handing over their lists of email contacts. It then sent fraudulent emails to all the addresses, purporting to be the owner of the contact list. The emails reportedly invited users to join the site.

Tagged CEO Greg Tseng has denied the allegations. He stated in a blog post Thursday, "Identity theft and invasion of privacy are very serious allegations and it is not accurate to portray Tagged, or any other social network, in this regard. In no instance did Tagged access a person's personal address book without their consent and no e-mails were sent without the person giving us permission."

Attorney General Cuomo, however, contends that the site sent 60 million such emails during the sites meteoric growth between April and June. Reportedly, the emails claimed the users had posted new pictures -- the email, though, was a ruse and no such pictures existed. In order to try to view the pictures, visitors were forced to register, and during the process give their email addresses. This in turn was used to spam more people.

Mr. Tseng calls the tactic innocent; pointing out that his company has since pulled the plug on it. He says that he realizes that the process was "confusing", but denies his firm did anything improper. Mr. Cuomo disagrees, describing, "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."

He hopes to see serious fines leveled against the company and for the company to be banned from sending similar spam in the future.

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80 million users?

By PAPutzback on 7/13/2009 9:16:23 AM , Rating: 4

I never heard of it. I wonder how may of these sites track accounts for useage after an account is created. I bet 20 million of those Tagged users never came back after being registered. Who hasn't signed up at a site to access something that was blocked and never gone back.

RE: 80 million users?

By 67STANG on 7/13/2009 10:18:27 AM , Rating: 2

Seriously, with my job, I'm on the net ALL DAY. I've never heard of this site.... Good thing I guess..

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RE: 80 million users?

By rippleyaliens on 7/13/2009 10:24:12 AM , Rating: 2

Seems that i have 3 friends, who always hit me with this tag thing..I hit site, and FIRST thing it wants is your yahoo/hotmail login information. Cancel, carry out business of the day. I kid ya not, within 2 days, im getting hit hard with a bunch of junk mail. From my friends no doubt, rofl.. Told them, change password.. So mail from them stoped immediatly, but random spam is still there..

The site targets the "Win Free Laptop" or the infamous Link within myspace traps, peoples..

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RE: 80 million users?

By MrBlastman on 7/13/2009 12:04:33 PM , Rating: 2

The philosophy is simple and will prevent people from being suprised, angered and then incensed to sue or call the cops:

If you don't want it on the internet, don't put it there! People who give out their information so freely are just asking for trouble.

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RE: 80 million users?

By invidious on 7/13/2009 12:53:35 PM , Rating: 3

So if we don't want spam we shouldnt give our email addresses to anyone? I think that defeats the purpose of having an email account.

Read the article, the only information that was "stolen" was address books. This isn't about financial or personal data.

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RE: 80 million users?

By murphyslabrat on 7/13/2009 1:59:49 PM , Rating: 2

But it was for financial purposes. It was for the sake of gaining massive advertising audience, which results in a higher price for adds. The result is that they are exploiting stupid people for money, and the means is through illicit knowledge of personal records.

On that topic, I have received "[Tagged]" emails and messages for a similar scam on facebook. Tt is unbelievable that anyone would fall for it, when it outright demands you provide your email address and password. For the facebook thing, it wouldn't allow me to leave the site, so I had to kill the firefox process.

It's things like this which really destroy my faith in humanity.

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Tagged?

By MrPoletski on 7/13/2009 9:22:22 AM , Rating: 3

After the lawsuits, the site will change it's name to 'Bagged'.

RE: Tagged?

By AwesomeSauce on 7/13/2009 5:27:17 PM , Rating: 3

Basically after this you could say they are tagged and bagged. Or for short: T-Bagged.

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RE: Tagged?

By grandpope on 7/13/2009 7:53:25 PM , Rating: 2

It's somehow even funnier that this T-Bag comment came from somebody named AwesomeSauce. :P

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RE: Tagged?

By MrPoletski on 7/14/2009 7:19:25 AM , Rating: 2

Is this company based in Boston? =)

(longshot reference...)

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Alright!

By WoWCow on 7/13/2009 9:16:40 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
Tagged CEO Greg Tseng has denied the allegations. He stated in a blog post Thursday, "Identity theft and invasion of privacy are very serious allegations and it is not accurate to portray Tagged, or any other social network, in this regard. In no instance did Tagged access a person's personal address book without their consent and no e-mails were sent without the person giving us permission."

Then later, according to this very same article he admits to doing the very thing he denied:

quote:
Mr. Tseng calls the tactic innocent; pointing out that his company has since pulled the plug on it. He says that he realizes that the process was "confusing", but denies his firm did anything improper.

Is that a an inconsistency or a confession to crime? Either way, I think he's nailed himself in the head.

In other News, Facebook's new apps requires you to submit all your information to spam your friends!

RE: Alright!

By brinox on 7/13/2009 9:53:38 AM , Rating: 2

actually, he did not admit guilt; he simply changed what he had said from "we didn't do this, because that would be illegal" to "we did do this, and it was not illegal".

If you look at the following quote, he reiterates the fact that he allegedly received permission from the users of the site to send e-mail out to the user's contact list:

quote:
Tagged CEO Greg Tseng has denied the allegations. He stated in a blog post Thursday, "Identity theft and invasion of privacy are very serious allegations and it is not accurate to portray Tagged, or any other social network, in this regard. In no instance did Tagged access a person's personal address book without their consent and no e-mails were sent without the person giving us permission .

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RE: Alright!

By omnicronx on 7/13/2009 10:26:30 AM , Rating: 2

Spamming people is still illegal, and making fake emails claiming something to be true that is not probably does not fall under the consent given anyways. Other sites/scams like these have gone down for much less. If they had not made the fake emails, the perhaps they could have got away with it, but nothing in their user agreement(or if it was a checkbox on the site or something) is going to save them from this.

Furthermore this all assumes that whatever consent that was apparently 'given' was legal in the first place. You can write anything you want in a service agreement, but that does not necessarily make it legal.

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Desert

By Alphafox78 on 7/13/2009 9:38:31 AM , Rating: 2

I just want to know how I can eat desert if I was diabetic.

RE: Desert

By jajig on 7/13/2009 10:27:17 AM , Rating: 2

There is no sugar in sun baked sand.

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RE: Desert

By saiga6360 on 7/13/2009 10:46:27 PM , Rating: 2

Unless, maybe if a diabetic peed on it.

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wait

By yacoub on 7/13/2009 10:25:18 AM , Rating: 2

Doesn't Facebook offer this same functionality? Is the difference just that Tagged didn't make it clear that's what it was doing?

quote:
The site allegedly tricked many of its users into handing over their lists of email contacts. It then sent fraudulent emails to all the addresses, purporting to be the owner of the contact list. The emails reportedly invited users to join the site.

RE: wait

By robert5c on 7/13/2009 12:31:07 PM , Rating: 2

facebook doesn't send out fradulent email, with lies or embelishments

facebook contact list feature is so you can quickly and easily find users on facebook that use the email in your contact list, so you can add them as friends.

facebook never sends any email to anyone on your contact list without permission, and not the kind of permission that is small typed into the TOS, but actually you submitting you wish to do so.

so no not the same...

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Identity theft?

By troysavary on 7/13/2009 12:28:48 PM , Rating: 2

When you make a Tagged account, it ASKS you for your password to your e-mail address and tells you that it will use this to find which of your contacts are already on Tagged and to send invites to contacts who are not there. It also allows you to skip this step. So he has no valid complaint there.

Now where I do take issue with Tagged is the amount of "teen girls" profiles are obvious fakes and are full of kiddie porn pulled from various sources on the net, but are not taken down no matter how many times they are reported.

RE: Identity theft?

By tmouse on 7/14/2009 8:45:17 AM , Rating: 2

IF the e-mails were from them, "inviting" your contacts you could be correct. They are being charged with impersonating the user and using their email accounts to send the invitations, that is quite a different thing. He has very solid charges there, now he does have to prove them but at the start he had 2 things to prove; first that tagged did this (which they have admitted) second that it is illegal (they say it's not). The point that needs to be proven is whether the user is giving permission to get email addresses only for the purpose of the company to send invitations FROM THE COMPANY, or whether they are giving permission for the company to impersonate them using their email addresses. I personally doubt anyone would give permission to anyone to impersonate them, but that my opinion.

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