tagged

The Attorney General (Attorney General) of the State of New York, Andrew M. Cuomo has made public the intention of taking legal action against the social network tagged.com for illegal advertising practices and invasion of privacy. Following an investigation by the Prosecutor's Office in which researchers conduct interviews also have posed by users, have demonstrated that Tagged has violated a "multitude of rules of the State of New York" according to the official statement.

Tagged users were tricked into providing the e-mail from their contacts that the company used to send unsolicited advertisements to the appearance of being sent by the user. Besides the advertising registration required to access private images "sent for his friends", when in fact there were no such photos. So Tagged got more email addresses to continue these practices in a process that would have exceeded 60 million emails worldwide according to the prosecution. In addition, email recipients must respond to the invitation, and the response is positive or negative, led the Tagged website fictitiously claiming that his friend would be informed if no answer. If the "friend" had uploaded a photo to social network, it appeared in the solicitation without your consent to give the appearance of greater credibility.

According to Attorney General Cuomo, "the company stole the contact list and identity of millions of people [...] this virulent form of spam is the online equivalent to entering a house, steal the agendas and sending fake emails to all personal contacts. Never accept this behavior in the real world, and we can not accept it online. " A very graphic example, which is sometimes necessary to resort to illustrate the relevance of certain types of network activities.

With the process is to stop these fraudulent activities and impose fines against the company, although Tagged temporarily suspended its marketing campaign in June after many complaints and criticism from users. It is desirable that the resolution of this case persuades other networks such as Sonic Badoo or practices similar to those that are accustomed to their users.

The rules of the State of New York which has been used to carry Tagged, Inc. to court include prohibition of deceptive trade practices (General Business Law § 349), the prohibition of false advertising (General Business Law § 350) and the right to privacy (Civil Rights Law § 50). For example, Spanish law applicable to similar cases prohibits the sending of advertising through electronic mail without prior express request or authorization of the addressee, according to Article 21 of Law 34/2002 of 11 July, of Services Information Society and Electronic Commerce. As for illicit, is dedicated to her by Title II of Law 34/1988 of 11 November, General Advertising affecting in this case Article 18 of the Spanish Constitution which guarantees the right to honor, privacy personal and family and reputation. Also, the treatment he has done Tagged data could constitute serious infringement of Article 44 of Law 15/1999 of 13 December on the Protection of Personal Data.