If you're reading this, you're either one of my regulars or you found this page through a search engine, trying to find out more about Tagged.com.

If you're trying to find out more about Tagged.com, you probably got a mail like this:

If you can't see the image, I've blurred out the name of the innocent person Tagged used as an unwitting accomplice. It says "[Name] sent you photos on Tagged - Want to see the photos? Please respond or [Name] may think you said no "

If you click through, it makes you start an account to see the photos. It doesn't seem so bad, but it's not just a matter of providing a name, e-mail address, and password. They also ask you to reject a bunch of sponsor offers (like the ones you have to complete at the sites that "give away" iPods for "free") then they ask you to provide access information to your webmail account (for me it was my gmail account) and make it look like the only way to continue is to do it (though if you hunt around, you'll find a small "skip" button on the page).

When you FINALLY get through the registration process, guess what... there are no photos. Yes, they told you that this person sent you photos on their site, but there are no photos from that person. I might think that the person in question deleted the photos before I got to them, but I've talked to other people who have had the exact same thing happen to them.

It's my guess that if you give them access to your mail account, they'll go in, collect your address book, and send all of the people in it an e-mail saying that you sent them photos well before you ever get to a stage where you could even upload photos. So while many people do not upload photos, much less specifically target their friends for receipt, their friends are getting them.

Furthermore, once you've signed up, they'll e-mail you and tell you that you've got a private message from the person who supposedly sent you the photos, though the message is an auto-generated welcome message from them that your friend never wrote.

They've sent me a number of e-mails since I signed up, even though I went through their help system and requested a membership cancellation immediately after I found out they were full of crap.

Whatever mail service you're on, if you get mail from them, report it as spam. Furthermore, I've filed a complaint about their deceptive practices at www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov. If the FTC gets enough complaints about Tagged.com, perhaps they'll fine those guys and force them to clean up their acts.

One last thing... are their mails spam? Since a friend gave them your e-mail address and permission to mail you on their behalf and they seem to follow the rules under CAN-SPAM for that initial contact, it's unlikely that they can strictly be considered spam. The problem instead is that they use deception to draw you to the site, to get you to go through their arduous registration process (which could cause you to give them permission to e-mail your friends and business associates along with the addresses), send you more bogus e-mails, then don't stop mailing you when you ask them to cancel your account.

So, are they spam? Legally, I don't think so (though I'd leave the definite judgement on that to a lawyer). Are they committing fraud? Is it a scam? I believe so and I hope the FTC will agree.

UPDATE: Time did an article on the Tagged scam. Tagged's CTO said it was merely a mistake that was being made by users who accidentally told them to spam their contacts. That's beside the point. These e-mails were sent with the claim that Person X sent you photos before Person X ever uploaded any photos. Then they send you a bogus e-mail about the person sending you a private message, but it's just an auto-generated welcome from Tagged with the person's name attached. That's not a simple mistake. In my opinion, these actions constitute fraud. Why isn't the FTC doing anything about this?