Put this under the heading of — In a world with a tremendous number of terrific web-based services that are good and respect privacy, if you employ sleazy tactics you’re out.

I subscribe to a tremendous number of social networking sites. As a rule, however, I don’t sign up with a site unless it’s directly recommended to me by a friend or I know a little bit about it. There are good reasons for doing it this way — and the website Tagged is one.

About a week ago I began receiving e-mails from people I know inviting me to join Tagged (no link included for reasons that will become obvious in a moment) and a messaged that I had been tagged in a picture. Thing was, it wasn’t one e-mail from each person. No, it was two or three or four different emails from the same person within a brief period of time. And these aren’t the kind of people who send out serial e-mails.

I went to look at the site to see which pictures I was in, and there was just something about it that just struck me as wrong. In order to see the pictures I first needed to sign up. For once (it is a rare occurrence), I decided not to sign up.

I didn’t give it much thought until I got this e-mail a few minutes ago from yet another friend –

folks.

Three people sent me an e-mail from TAGGED, and when I opened it they automatically sent an invitation to all my AOL addresses to join. Please disregard. Most annoying, and I am trying to reach TAGGED to tell them I am NOT interested.

So when you sign up the site seems to access your address book and send out an invitation to everybody in it telling them that they were tagged in a picture and should sign up to see it. But that’s not what’s going on here. You aren’t in a picture. The service just grabbed your email address and used the “You’ve been tagged” line to get you to sign up and give them YOUR address book, too. I believe that is called….SPAMMING!!!!!!

The site says “over 70 million people are on tap. Are you?” Of the 70 million people, I cannot help but wonder how many actually signed up and how many came in through this disgraceful approach.

Message to the folks at Tagged- you may have a fantastic service but I won’t know or suggest it to anyone else I can influence, until you stop this policy when people sign up. It’s disgraceful, it’s despicable and it needs to stop.