Social networks live and die by its members, particularly how many it has. If no one is using the site then it’s not much of a network and isn’t very social. The only problem is that some social networks go beyond the pail in its methods to try and secure new members. Tagged is accused of some particularly sneaky tactics in its efforts to grow.

Tagged was founded in 2004 by Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith, two Harvard math students who clearly had big ambitions. The site has recently been claiming to be the third most-popular social network behind Facebook and MySpace, boasting 80 million users.

The problem is how Tagged came to have so many registered members. Unlike Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn and the rest, Tagged is accused of tricking people into joining the site. New York’s attorney general Andrew Cuomo is planning to sue the company for invasion of privacy and spam offenses.

The issue centers on how Tagged allegedly tricked legitimate users into giving up their personal email address books. The company then allegedly used these to target new members with unsolicited spam emails which were disguised to make it look as though the Tagged user was sending their friend an invite to view photos of themselves on the site.

Unfortunately, not only did the photos not exist, to view them the friend was asked to sign up for an account, thus another member was added to the count, whether they had any knowledge or interest in Tagged beforehand.

According to The New York Times, Cuomo said:

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. 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 had already put a halt on this email campaign by June after receiving over 2,000 complaints from users about it. But Cuomo still wants to see action taken so that it, and other social networks as well, realize the implications of these kinds of deceptive marketing practices. And rightly so.

This sucks of collecting people for no reason other than to build a list of people ripe for further spamming or manipulation. Social networks live and die by its members but those members are starting to realize their personal information is still private and shouldn’t be used for dodgy marketing efforts such as this. Let’s hope other social networking sites take heed.

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Entry was posted on Friday, July 10th, 2009 at 1:56 am under Internet, Legal, Opinion, Social Media.

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