FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
April 12, 2010
CONTACT: Erica Terry Derryck, DA Harris’ Office, (415) 553-1167
ADA Brian Buckelew, DA Harris’ Office, (415) 553-1383
SAN FRANCISCO DISTRICT ATTORNEY KAMALA D. HARRIS ANNOUNCES
SETTLEMENT IN UNFAIR BUSINESS PRACTICES ACTION AGAINST SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE
SAN FRANCISCO, CA – The San Francisco District Attorney Kamala D. Harris announced today that a settlement has been reached with Tagged.com, a social networking site based in San Francisco.“Whether you’re doing business on Main Street or in cyber space, you can’t deceive the customer,” said District Attorney Kamala D. Harris.
Under the terms of the settlement, Tagged, Inc. will pay $650,000 in civil penalties and investigative costs to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office. The settlement also includes an injunction requiring Tagged.com to implement a system of clear disclosures, informed consent, and other safeguards to protect both Tagged.com members and the general public from unfair business practices.
The settlement followed an investigation by the District Attorney’s Office into the website’s mass email campaign in the spring of 2009, in which it sent 40-60 million deceptive emails in an effort to attract new members to its website. The emails falsely stated that a Tagged.com member had sent the recipient a photograph or private message (which in most cases did not exist). Before a recipient could access the promised photograph or private message, he or she was required to complete a registration pathway that misled many into unknowingly giving Tagged.com access to the recipient’s email contact list. Tagged.com then repeated the process by sending the same set of deceptive email invitations to all of the individuals in the recipient’s email contact list. Many consumers only learned later that, to their chagrin, Tagged.com had sent bogus email invitations in their names to all the people in the consumer’s contact list.
“We cannot in the name of aggressive marketing allow social networking sites and other tech companies to use unfair practices that breech our trust, invade our privacy and tarnish our good names,” said DA Harris.
In addition to ordering Tagged.com to pay $650,000 in penalties and costs, the Stipulated Judgment and Injunction requires Tagged.com to implement a set of safeguards for future business practices. Under the injunction, before Tagged.com may access a consumer’s email contact list, Tagged.com must provide clear and conspicuous disclosures and obtain the consumer’s affirmative consent. Tagged.com must also implement procedures for a consumer to view and approve any message before it is sent in the consumer’s name to individuals in the consumer’s email contact list.
David Pfeifer, June Cravett and Max Peltz are the Assistant District Attorneys who led the investigation and negotiated the settlement.
In 2004, DA Harris created a Consumer and Environmental Protection Unit as part of the Special Prosecution Division of the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office to combat these types of offenses.
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