By Dan Mitchell, MLM Blog Correspondent

From AFP:

WASHINGTON (AFP) — The attorney general of New York state announced plans on Thursday to sue social network Tagged for deceptive email marketing practices and invasion of privacy.

Attorney general Andrew Cuomo, in a statement on his website, said a lawsuit was being filed against the San Francisco-based social network for "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," the statement said.

"Tagged disguised these solicitations to make them appear as if they were coming from a personal contact, when they were actually spam," it said.

Between April and June, Tagged sent "tens of millions" of misleading emails stating that Tagged members had posted private photos online for their friends to view, the statement said. "In reality, no such photos existed and the email was not from their friends.

"When recipients of these fraudulent emails tried to access the photos, they were forced to become a new member of Tagged," the statement said. "The company would then illegally gain access to their personal email contacts to send more fraudulent invitations."

"This company stole the address books and identities of millions of people," Cuomo said. "Consumers had their privacy invaded and were forced into the embarrassing position of having to apologize to all their email contacts for Tagged?s unethical — and illegal — behavior.

"This very virulent form of spam is the online equivalent of breaking into a home, stealing address books, and sending phony mail to all of an individual?s personal contacts," he said. "We would never accept this behavior in the real world, and we cannot accept it online."

The statement said the lawsuit aims to stop Tagged from engaging in "fraudulent practices" and seeks an unspecified fine from the company.

Tagged suspended the email marketing campaign in June.

Tagged chief executive Greg Tseng, in a blog post on Thursday, called Cuomo's announcement "disheartening."

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