Posts Tagged ‘ Tagged.com ’

Tagged.com agrees to pay up

November 10th, 2009. By AbiK

It’s really a small price to pay, but Tagged.com has agreed to settle—to the tune of $750k—with both New York state and Texas after both states charged the social networking site with using less than scrupulous tactics to try and build their user base.

If you recall—and we covered the drama on LawyersAndSettlements.com—Tagged.com was basically snagging users’ email lists and sending out “invitations” to those email addresses. The catch was that the invitations asked recipients to view private photos that the Tagged.com member wanted to share. Unfortunately, the Tagged.com member didn’t want to share any photos, and they had no clue that Tagged.com was going out and sending these emails to their entire personal email contact list.

For those who clicked through the invitation in hopes of finding those private photos, the only thing they really found was a ploy to get them to become Tagged.com members as well. Not cool.

So New York (specifically state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo) and Texas went after Tagged.com and now there’s an agreement to settle.

Of course, Tagged.com admits no wrongdoing. But they are going to pay $500,000 to New York and $250,000 to Texas. Along with paying these penalties, the Associated Press reports that Tagged.com will “not access contacts or send messages without the member’s informed permission” and it will “also provide clear and conspicuous disclosures”. 

Tags: Tagged.com
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Tagged.com: Poser member caught up in kiddie porn

September 11th, 2009. By AbiK

Wasn’t it just a few days ago that we posted about a sexual assault case that started as a seemingly find-your-true-love-online deal via Tagged.com?

This time it’s kiddie porn charges—not played out thankfully, but the accused is charged with keeping “stores of child pornography in his Lilburn (GA) home”, according to the Gwinnett Daily Post.

How’d it happen? The accused, Bish Shorrosh, 51, was on Tagged.com posing as a 45-year old guy named “Matthew”. Luckily (or not) he got into an online conversation with a woman from Texas—with whom he shared things like the fact that he apparently (allegedly!) likes “teen boys” and girls when they “start growing physically”. Uh-huh.

As with all these types of cases, what’s amazing is that this woman continued to talk with this guy. They apparently exchanged emails and started talking over at Yahoo chat. Go figure. But at least that’s how the guy was caught—so it’s really a public service that this woman provided.

We may have to start keeping score between Tagged.com and Craigslist.

Tags: Tagged.com
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Tagged.com: Add Sexual Assault Claim to Email Harvesting?

September 5th, 2009. By AbiK

“Tagged and Shagged?” could’ve been the headline for this one—but that would’ve been in really poor taste. Still, it’s at the heart of the story…

After posting about the Tagged.com lawsuit that was filed in California, along with NY State Attorney General Cuomo’s stating that he planned to sue Tagged.com for false advertising, invasion of privacy and egaging in deceptive business practice, seems Tagged.com has just been linked to a sexual assault case in Pennsylvania.

The Pittsburgh Tribune Review reported that a 51-year old Hempfield woman met some 33-year old guy on Tagged.com and they started corresponding via email and had actually met on two occasions. But the third time wasn’t a charm. Seems for the third hook-up, the man called her Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Tagged.com
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Tagged…You are SO not it

August 14th, 2009. By AbiK

By now you may have seen the news about the site Tagged.com. Wonder what all the fuss is over? Take a look, compliments of my inbox:

Annoying, right? Well, two folks from California have had enough of Tagged.com’s tactics and are suing the company. The lawsuit alleges that Tagged.com duped them into sharing their email contacts and started sending all those contacts misleading ads.

As reported at mediapost.com, the claim states “Tagged harvested millions of email addresses from the email address books of consumers. Then, using these consumers’ email account credentials, Tagged sent unsolicited advertisements to the harvested email addresses, making the messages appear as if they were invitations to join Tagged sent by persons known to the recipients.”

The screen shot above is the exact depiction of what happened to me. Someone sent me a Tagged.com message on Facebook. Voila! I’m now on Tagged.com’s email love list. And as the plaintiffs state, I too do not recall ever signing up for anything and merely clicked to see the “photos” my friend on Facebook said she was “sharing” with me via Tagged.

Tags: Tagged.com
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