N.Y. Atorney General To Sue 'Tagged' Social Networking Site

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo charged social networking site Tagged.com Thursday with spamming and stealing identities from 60 million of its users by sending illegal e-mails that raided their personal contact lists.

Cuomo served Tagged with a notice of intent, announcing that his office planned to sue the social networking site for concocting an illegal scheme to bolster traffic numbers and reel in millions of new users.

"This company stole the address books and identities of millions of people," Cuomo said in a statement. "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."

San Francisco-based Tagged.com boasts 80 million users and touts itself as the third largest social networking site after Facebook and MySpace.

According to the notice of intent, Cuomo charged that Tagged tricked most of those users into handing over access to their e-mail contact lists. The company then used the contact lists to send out promotional spam that appeared as if it was coming from a personal contact. In actuality, the fraudulent e-mails were sent by Tagged from pilfered contact lists, the New York Attorney General's Office said.

Tagged CEO Greg Tseng denied Cuomo's allegations.

"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," said Tseng in a responding blog post Thursday. "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."

Cuomo's office further charged that Tagged sent 60 million misleading e-mails to users between April and June, designed to lure more users to the site by sending messages telling users that a Tagged member had posted private photos of their friends online. The spammed e-mail, however, was not from their friends and no such photos existed.

Once the recipient opened the e-mail and attempted to access the photos, they were forced to become Tagged members, which automatically provided the company access to their e-mail accounts, according to the New York Attorney General's office. Tagged would then spam all of the personal contacts in the user's e-mail account with the same fraudulent messages, the Attorney General's office said, adding that if a member had added a personal image to the Web site, Tagged also included the picture as a way to further entice users to sign up.

Tseng said in a blog post that he realized that the "invite your friends" function of the registration process was confusing after receiving copious complaints from e-mail recipients. Tseng contended that the company pulled the plug on the registration process prior to being contacted by the New York Attorney General's Office.

"We realize that some were confused and accidentally agreed to invite their friends. We are truly sorry for any inconvenience or frustration that these people experienced," Tseng said.

Specifically, the lawsuit aims to prevent Tagged from sending fraudulent or misleading spam e-mails while slapping the company with various financial penalties.

However, despite the apology from Tseng, Cuomo holds fast to his position that the company deliberately misled its users and engaged in illegal practices in order to fraudulently inflate numbers.

"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," Cuomo said.

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