Spammer Loses Big to Tagged
Tagged, the premier social networking site, has just won a default judgment to the cool tune of $200,000 against an individual who spammed its members. The ruling was issued this week by U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup, in the northern district of California. The court found that Erik Vogeler sent messages to over 6,000 Tagged users, and included links to an adult dating Web site. The damages were estimated at $25 per violation, for a total of $151,975. The extra $50,000 awarded damages went to paying attorneys fees. It was no surprise that Vogeler failed to appear in court to defend himself in this action.
The network site Tagged alleged that the messages sent by Vogeler were considered spam per the CAN-SPAM statute since they included a "false and misleading header." The company went on to allege that the actions of Vogeler "were calculated to lead Tagged users…to believe that the emails came from other Tagged users who sought them out for personal and social reasons."
As fate would have it, in a separate action, Tagged was itself accused of soliciting its users. In that lawsuit, Tagged was sued by two California residents for allegedly capturing their email contacts and sending invitations to join the site to their friend lists.
A year ago, law related authorities in New York and Texas received $750,000 from Tagged to settle an action that had been investigated by the officials in those states. In that case, the company was said to have utilized deceptive email marketing practices.
As a result, Tagged has changed its registration procedures when new members come to the site to join the social network.
Source: http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=121523&nid=110552
