Social networking site sued over email harvesting

There's a war going on over purloined email, and the latest complaint ended up in federal court in San Francisco. Two California residents have sued social networking site Tagged.com for allegedly duping them into sharing their email contacts and then
sending those contacts misleading ads.

"Tagged harvested millions of email addresses from the email address books of consumers," according to the complaint that was reported by MediaPost.com. "Then, using these consumers' email account credentials, Tagged sent unsolicited advertisements to the harvested email addresses, making the messages appear as if they were invitations to join Tagged sent by persons known to the recipients," it said.

The lawsuit follows a statement several weeks ago by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, that said he intended to sue Tagged for false advertising, invasion of privacy and engaging in a deceptive business practice. This lawsuit may just be the beginning of a new challenge to define proprietary information and to protect it.

For more on this lawsuit:
- check out this MediaPost.com article

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