Online Social Network Spam: Growing Trend? - Social Site Spammer
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It was the work of a moment to Google Tagged.com. I learned from an eWeek article that Tagged has been “harvesting teenagers.” I apologize if I’m a little behind the times; the article dates to April 2007. Anyway, author Larry Seltzer reported getting about six emails from a friend of his inviting him to join Tagged.com, saying “Please respond or [friend’s name] will think you said no. :( .” Like the ones I received, these emails looked auto-generated. Like me, Seltzer passed up the invitation, but he did more research.
Seltzer found a blog entry from Symantec that explained how Tagged works. In part, it said that “…when a user signs up for Tagged, they’re practically forced to put in their Webmail credentials. Tagged then logs into your Webmail account as you, accesses your address book and prompts you to e-mail your contacts using your Webmail address as the reply-to.” Can you say “invasion of privacy”? I knew you could. Here I bow to Seltzer, because at this point he put in the work with multiple Gmail accounts to prove that Tagged actually did engage in this practice; I recommend reading the article to anyone who’s curious about the technology.
Seltzer went on to talk about Tagged’s Terms of Service, which are a little scary. Basically, they can share your email address and assorted other information – even your eye color, it says so right in the ToS – with third parties for marketing purposes. Users may opt out, but Tagged targets teenagers; how many of them are going to read the Terms of Service to find out how they can opt out of marketing? Tagged also specifically lies in its terms of service; it says that “Users have the option, within their Internet browsers, to disable cookies and continue to access the Tagged website." When Seltzer tried it, he found out that “If you disable cookies it won’t let you log in and says that you have to enable cookies.”
Needless to say, I didn’t sign up for Tagged.com. I don’t want to inconvenience my friends with invitations to try out new social networks. I definitely don’t want to see my friends involved in a social network that’s that grabby about personal information. What’s even worse is that the site doesn’t actually SAY they’re going to use your email to send out all these invitations to all your friends to join the network.
Next: Invitations from Strangers >>
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