Tagged, Inc., a social networking site operator that has almost two million users in Texas alone has finally received the enforcement action from Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott. The agreed final judgment obtained by the state, Tagged must implement new privacy features and take additional measures to inform their users on how the social network will use their personal information.

In order to use Tagged, users must sign up and create an account. What users didn’t know and what the state investigators found out, is that Tagged misled its subscribers into providing Tagged access to their email address books. Tagged used their access to send misleading electronic invitations to users’ personal contacts under the users’ names. The “users” offered to share photos and media with the recipients but when the recipients tried to view the shared items, they were prompted to sign up to the social network and gave Tagged access to their address books, thus continuing the social network’s deceptive practice.

The Texas Attorney General’s resolution states that Tagged must clearly state how the users’ address book information will be used and must provide users with noticeable “cancel” or “skip this step” buttons and requite a single page disclosure for users to accept access to their address books.

Proper and established social networks such as Facebook and Myspace don’t access their users’ address books without permission. However, up-and-coming social sites would go through great lengths to steal their users’ contacts and trick them to increase their number of users and appeal to various advertisers.

As part of the social network’s agreement with the Texas Attorney General, Tagged must pay $250,000 for its violations and for the cost of the state’s investigation.

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