I keep getting invitations to Tagged and I am getting really annoyed. There are several signs that it’s malicious and I feel like I’m trapped.

First, the ‘invitation’ email:

I quote the word ‘invitation’ because you’ll notice that it says “Click here to unsubscribe from Tagged”. I never subscribed and never once gave them the right to use my email address so I am certainly not subscribed. However, because people have invited me to join using my address, they took the liberty to subscribe me. Not ok.

(It also gives no context as to who is inviting you. I know about 8 people called Ana).

When you try to unsubscribe, you see the obvious CYA message:

Which is fine, except, it says “We will not share your personal information with your partners”, which leads me to believe that they have already shared my email address. What’s more absurd about this is that if you get a new pseudo-invitation, you have to keep unsubscribing!

If that wasn’t enough, when you visit the site you will notice the quality ads that it displays. I don’t have an issue with display banners, but at this day and age, a pop-up with animated cursors spells MALICIOUS six ways to Sunday. If that doesn’t convince you, take a brief look at profile page to get a sense of the type of SPAM that goes around this network.

Lastly, their ‘About’ page is (conveniently?) broken, so you can’t really know much about who they are. I may seem like I’m picking on them, but when you only have a link to the About page on your homepage but not anywhere else on the site, and that link is broken, I think you’re cheating.