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 and made plans for him to visit at her home. He did, but he also brought a friend. Apparently trusting in the relationship that had been established to date, she let them in and after a few drinks, she claims to have passed out—only to wake up the next morning in bed with some of her clothes on backwards. Yeah, that’s the part that makes you go, “hmm”.

Anyone with info on this is urged to call the state police at 724-832-3288.

Anyone who hasn’t gotten the memo yet on using Facebook, Craigslist, Twitter, Tagged, MySpace, Bebo, Match, Friendster, Eharmony, et al…don’t share your personal info and don’t believe everything you see and read…But back to Tagged…

It’s hard to gauge how many users are actually on Tagged.com—estimates range from 60-80 million; the July ’09 traffic report from compete.com indicates 4.5 million unique visitors for the month; and NY Attorney General Cuomo is quoted as estimating that Tagged.com has sent out over 60 million deceptive emails aimed at getting more folks to join the site. Suffice to say though, in terms of traffic, it’s a fairly popular site. Question is, is that popularity inflated due to emails that say “You’ve been tagged by a friend!” or similar—when no friend has actually “tagged” you or selected you or even mentioned you; all they did, upon receiving a spammy email like the one just mentioned, was to inadvertantly grant Tagged.com access to their email contacts–and now…Tagged! You’re it!

I keep getting emails from Tagged.com begging me to join—a friend of mine on Facebook fell prey to Tagged.com’s tactics. So as any chick who’s blogging for a legal site would do, I’m filing them and all my log notes as you never know where this will go—and we’ll all be watching the current lawsuit in CA and Attorney General Cuomo’s next steps…

Tags: Tagged.com

This was posted on Saturday, September 5th, 2009 at 10:07 am and is filed under Emerging Issues . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.