tagged

The Attorney General (Attorney General) of the State of New York, Andrew M. Cuomo has made public the intention to take legal action against social networking tagged.com for illegal advertising practices and invasion of privacy. Following an investigation of the Prosecutor's Office in which researchers, that in addition to interviews have been masquerading as users have been able to verify 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 getting 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, positive or negative, led the Tagged website fictitious affirming that his friend would be informed if no answer. If the "friend" had uploaded a photo to social network, it appeared on the invitation without their consent to give the appearance of greater credibility.

According to Attorney General Cuomo, "the company stole the contact list and the 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, which is sometimes necessary to resort to illustrate the relevance of certain kinds of activities on the network.

With the process is to put an end to these fraudulent activities and impose fines on 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 persuade other networks such as Sonic Badoo or practices similar to those they 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 the illegal advertising, it is dedicated to Title II of Law 34/1988, of November 11th General Advertising affecting in this case Article 18 of the Spanish Constitution, which guarantees the right to honor, privacy personal and family self-image. Furthermore, the treatment he has done Tagged data could constitute serious infringement of Article 44 of Law 15/1999, of December 13, Protection of Personal Data.