High time someone asked harder questions: Tagged, the San Francisco-based social network that has taken heat for digging into anyone address books and sending invite e-mails to all, is now about to be sued by Andrew Cuomo, New York’s attorney general. From a statement by AG’s office: it plans to sue “for deceptive email marketing practices and invasion of privacy…Tagged devised an illegal plan to lure new members and artificially inflate traffic on its site. Consumers who visited Tagged were tricked into providing the company with access to their personal email contacts, which the company then used to send millions of promotional emails. Tagged disguised these solicitations to make them appear as if they were coming from a personal contact, when they were actually spam.” The statement goes on to say this happened from April to June this year, but I recall getting such e-mails from purported users last year as well (and I mentioned it in a funding post I did last year).

Tagged CEO Greg Tseng has a carefully worded response on their own blog: ” When our company tested a new registration process, we discovered that our “invite your friends” language was confusing…We immediately stopped using this registration process…In no instance did Tagged access a person’s personal address book without their consent and no emails were sent without the person giving us permission.” Which doesn’t really tell you the full picture. NYT and PEHub explain more on this, while Techcrunch defended it previously.

The company has raised about $14 million in funding since it was founded in 2005, including from Reid Hoffman, Mayfield Fund and debt investors Horizon Technology Finance Management and
Leader Ventures. It has said it is profitable for more than two years and has revenue in the $10 million - $20 million range.

Tagged Complaint

• Social Network Tagged Gets $5 Million Venture Debt
• Teen Social Site Tagged Gets $7 Million Venture Funding