WBTV 3 News, Weather, Sports, and Traffic for Charlotte, NC-Tagged.com settles with NY, Texas in invite fight
Member Center:
Hurricane warning issued for Mass. as East Coast braces for weekend pounding by Earl More>>
Coast Guard: a mile-long oil sheen spreading from site of burning Gulf platform off La. coast More>>
Hurricane warning issued for Mass. as East Coast braces for weekend pounding by Earl More>>
Out of rubble of Haiti hotel, online family is born as Facebookers vow to leave no one behind More>>
Cautious US relaunches direct Israeli-Palestinian peace talks after 2 years More>>
Hurricane Earl bears down on East Coast, bringing island evacuations and rough holiday weather More>>
NY Muslim groups decry hostile atmosphere, say bigotry shouldn't impede Islamic institutions More>>
Gunman mad over Discovery Channel programs takes hostages at its offices, is killed by police More>>
NEW YORK (AP) - The social networking Web site Tagged.com has adopted reforms on the use of invitation e-mails after being accused of essentially stealing the e-mail addresses of some 60 million Internet users, state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced Monday.
Cuomo charged in July that the San Francisco-based Tagged.com sent out e-mails to members' contact lists, asking recipients to view private photos posted by their friends. But when the recipients tried to access the photos, they were asked to sign up for the site, and the e-mail addresses in their contact lists were then lifted to send out more solicitation emails, Cuomo said.
On Monday, Cuomo said Tagged will not access contacts or send messages without the member's informed permission. It also will provide clear and conspicuous disclosures.
As part of the agreement, Tagged will pay $500,000 in penalties and costs to New York. In a second agreement, the company will pay $250,000 in penalties and costs to Texas, which also investigated Tagged's practices.
Tagged CEO Greg Tseng said the 5-year-old company had voluntarily proposed reforms and overhauled its registration process. It also planned to add more privacy features.
"We are thrilled to put the dispute behind us," he wrote Monday in a post on Tagged's site. The company admitted no wrongdoing.
Tagged bills itself as the third-largest social networking site in the United States after Facebook and MySpace. It has more than 80 million members worldwide, most of whom live outside the U.S.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
