New York State Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo recently announced that he has served the social networking site Tagged.com with formal notice that his office intends to sue the company for identity theft, invasion of privacy, and deceptive email marketing practices.
Between April and June of 2009, according to Cuomo’s notice of intent, Tagged sent tens of millions of emails to consumers stating that Tagged members had posted private photos online for their friends to view.
However – according to the notice – no such photos existed, the emails were not from friends, and when recipients of these emails tried to view the photos they were tricked into providing the company with access to their personal email contacts, which the company then used to send more promotional emails.
These practices amounted to identity theft and invasion of privacy, Attorney General Cuomo claimed:
"This company stole the address books and identities of millions of people. Consumers had their privacy invaded."
Tagged CEO Greg Tseng denied allegations of identity theft and invasion of privacy in his blog:
"Identify 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 June, Tagged – the 3rd largest social networking site in the U.S. and one of the largest in the world with over 80 million registered members worldwide, according to Tseng – suspended its email marketing campaign, which had sent over 60 million emails to consumers worldwide, in response to user complaints and criticism.
While it appears on the surface that Tagged.com’s actions were only meant to increase traffic and memberships, the lurking dangers of privacy loss and identity theft have led to a closer of inspection of the practices conducted by social networking sites and online businesses with regards to the personally identifying information (PII) of users.
In today’s digital age where almost everyone’s PII is readily available in cyberspace, one thing – invasion of privacy – can quickly lead to another – identity theft.
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tahearn@mybackgroundcheck.com
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