Tagged.com Social Network Sued For Child Porn

NEW YORK — Child pornography was allowed to remain on social-networking site Tagged.com for nearly two months after undercover investigators posed as users and reported the content to the site's administrators, the state attorney general's office charged Thursday.

The office notified Tagged.com that it would sue the site if the problems were not resolved within 5 days, said Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, who previously targeted the site last summer and accused it of stealing the identities of more than 60 million Internet users in a deceptive marketing campaign.

One slideshow that remained on the site as of Thursday morning depicted children, some who appeared as young as 5, engaged in sexual acts with other children, Cuomo's office said. The slideshow was sent to Tagged.com on April 17 using the site's own reporting procedures.

Louis Willacy, a lawyer for Tagged Inc., issued a statement saying the site was cooperating with investigators and hoped "to resolve this quickly in the best interest of our members' safety."

"We strive constantly to improve our program to keep illegal content out and prevent unlawful contact between adults and minors on our site," he said. A spokeswoman declined to comment further.

Cuomo, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, told reporters at a press conference that he was speaking as a father of three school-age daughters when he issued a warning to parents: "Sometimes the most dangerous place for a young person can be sitting on their bed, in their bedroom, at home with their computer open – because you really don't know where they are," he said.

After receiving a civilian tip, investigators from Cuomo's office spent three months creating undercover user accounts and posing as both parents and abusers. They made more than 100 reports about 80 users, but as of Thursday morning, 51 of those users still had active accounts, the office said. Hours after the press conference, the slideshow featuring young children was still online, the office said.

Investigators also said they found that adult users of the site were sending inappropriate sexual messages and photographs to members identifying themselves as underage. Some of the site's user groups centered on underage sex, Cuomo's office said.

Information on possible convicted sex offenders registered on the site was passed on to local law enforcement agencies, the office said.

Tagged, based in California, was started in 2004 by Harvard math students Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith. The website calls itself "one of the largest social networks in the world" and claims to be one of the top 10 online display-ad publishers in the U.S.

Comments

[davidwayneosedach]

01:31 PM on 06/13/2010

Why did they have child porn? A mistake? Or, for revenue?

[cjk002]

04:25 PM on 06/13/2010

It's a social networking site, which means that the materials were being uploaded by its users.

[ncconcernedcitizen]

12:55 PM on 06/13/2010

They definitely need to removed the users. I am not sure what the hang up, but if it is technical fix it, if it is policy, create a memo, if the owners are using it to make money, shut them down, lock them up and throw away the key.

[rodiak]

06:01 AM on 06/13/2010

5 year olds?! I want to puke my guts out after reading this... Seriously how much of a sick monster do you have to be to want to see something like that?!! Let alone film it.

[Draekia]

06:30 AM on 06/13/2010

Genetic mutation that needs to be removed from the gene pool.

Sorry, I'm usually pretty open-minded about most things -- but I consider this disorder to be a danger to the future health of the species.

Pre-pubescents(sp?) being seen in such a light is a sign you should be purged. 'nuff said.

[bigmovieman]

05:40 PM on 06/13/2010

technically they only "appeared" as 5 years olds so theoretically they could have been older. Not that it justifies anything though.

[Wombaticus]

01:53 AM on 06/13/2010

"Cuomo, a candidate for the Democratic nomination for governor, told reporters at a press conference that he was speaking as a father of three school-age daughters when he issued a warning to parents: "Sometimes the most dangerous place for a young person can be sitting on their bed, in their bedroom, at home with their computer open – because you really don't know where they are," he said."
How exactly are children in danger by sitting at their computers? Seems like there is some kind of confusion with the child porn (children being abused) as content and kids on the internet as viewers. I don't doubt there will be hands thrown in the air over the thought of a child seeing something dreadful, but it's completely disreputable to equate SEEing porn with being forced to BE the porn. The real crime is against the kids in the porn video, not kids talking to each other on social networks.

[drumsgirl]

09:30 AM on 06/13/2010

And sometimes the adults posing as kids/teens online lure those youngsters to meet up with them.

[kcsandy]

10:20 AM on 06/13/2010

Most of us think that children seeing porn is really bad, too. Of course, the children in the porn are the ones in danger and are the victims of a crime. But just like I wouldn't want my children watching videos of someone being beheaded (which seems to be possible thanks to radical muslims), I would want them to watch porn either. A lot of porn is way more kinky than just a man and woman having sex with each other. But even that is not something I'd want someone 13 or under to watch. And drumsgirl (in her post) is absolutely right - there are thousands of adult men who surf the internet with the intention of finding very young people in order to have sex with them.

[worktheoracle]

01:45 AM on 06/13/2010

hold the phone ~ there's a whole side to this story that is completely absent from both this article, as far as i could discern, and the comments i'm reading, and that is what is being done to isolate those who posted them and to figure out if any of those people are able to be tracked down, due to the fact that we're talking about evidence of a crime and those responsible might either be those that posted or people associated with them ~ in other words, why is this story about purging a site and not some top-notch investigative effort to both locate and help whatever children might be able to be found through the users posting the pics? according to reports, there's 300,000 children nefariously enslaved in the US alone, and while understanding that those children posted on the site might live anywhere, that is if they're still alive ~ couldn't there be a substantially greater effort to locate and help them?

[drumsgirl]

09:32 AM on 06/13/2010

I do believe that every law enforcement agency that uncovers child porn forwards the images the FBI Innocent Images taskforce to see if they can ID the children - and the FBI shares with Interpol. A central taskforce helps keep from duplicating work efforts, allows the best uses of resources, and the best chance at tracking down both victims and criminals.

[worktheoracle]

04:57 PM on 06/13/2010

that's of some comfort, thanks ~

[berrycooda]

10:17 PM on 06/12/2010

So much for accountability....
Wonder how many computers these child porn pictures are on.

What a sad, disgusting, degrading bunch of perverts who prey on little innocent children....

[TehChef]

05:19 PM on 06/12/2010

This is disgusting... I really can't say anymore than that, I don't even have the words...

[Tunghoy]

03:49 PM on 06/12/2010

This article is also a comment on lousy customer service. Once many sites get you to sign up -- whether they have your dollars or your eyeballs -- they couldn't care less what happens. Too many admins ignore mail and support requests. So I'm not surprised at all that this happened.

[trollslayer69]

07:33 AM on 06/12/2010

Jeebus how do they let these sites stay up? Sue them? Shut them down.

[machivellianX]

07:45 AM on 06/12/2010

really now, a company with millions of users, 10000's of servers. I'd like to watch you try and manage a network like that. More likely than not the admins, which any company usually skimps on, or underpays were trying to keep up with the insane demand of managing all of this and failed very badly. It's negligence no doubt and almost every ISP, or social network has the exact same problem. Companies need to spend a lot more money of eyeballs/admins sifting through their internal infrastructure, but it's still nearly an impossible job to catch all.

[trollslayer69]

07:55 AM on 06/12/2010

hey mach any site that has child porn_ on it and left on it should be taken down, removed. I am all for free speech but that is the one line that i can say should never be crossed. We as a society need to protect our children. If the site allows it they are guilty. they need to introduce community mods that can take this kind of stuff down. There can be 0 tolerance in my opinion.

[drumsgirl]

09:35 AM on 06/13/2010

Normally I'd agree -however - the child porn images were reported. Also - I have been online since the days of Spry's "Internet In A Box" and a 9600 baud dial up - and I have yet to just accidentally run across child porn. I think you have to work hard to find it, cuz I've never seen it.

[Trillian4210]

06:42 PM on 06/11/2010

Dang, I was hoping it was 4 chan that got busted.

[Bruckley]

08:10 PM on 06/12/2010

4 what?

[Trillian4210]

10:07 PM on 06/12/2010

It's a social networking site that started out anime-related and has morphed into a den of anything-goes. There is one off-shoot of it (I can't recall the name) that allows users to anonymously post ANYTHING they want, including the subject of this article.

[rbryanh]

06:13 PM on 06/11/2010

Doncha just love the meaningless, gratuitous photos? Yup, that's definitely the nape of a pedophile, and only a pornographer would wear that hat.

[Saskai]

01:06 PM on 06/11/2010

I'd never even heard of "tagged.com" until this article.

[amdezurik]

01:18 PM on 06/11/2010

same here, but then again i don't do blechspace or foolbook so I generally ignore them all ;p

[microsoap]

02:24 PM on 06/11/2010

Ditto. Must be a pretty crappy social networking site. I know 5 or 6 that aren't even popular before I could say I ever heard of this.

[Claw2122]

11:30 AM on 06/11/2010

"After receiving a civilian tip, investigators from Cuomo's office spent three months creating undercover user accounts and posing as both parents and abusers. "

You know i was happy about this until i read this part. Had they just stopped at the working undercover to report other users is all fine and dandy. But suing them when you yourself added to the problem you claim to want to stop just doesn't make sense.

[Saskai]

01:07 PM on 06/11/2010

Agreed.

[The Imp]

08:41 PM on 06/11/2010

Not so fast.
In order to stop the supply, you must curb the demand. I believe they posed as parents to entice abusers with hopes of collecting even more images and newer children. And abusers seems pretty obvious..get in with the crew, see how far it goes, obtain as much info as possible before taking further action. Just sayin..

[HotheadPaisen]

05:51 PM on 06/12/2010

Agreed.

[INKDxxRUBI]

07:01 PM on 06/12/2010

Indeed. Great points.