Tagged.com has been tagged by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo as an unsafe place for kids.
"Parents be warned," advised Cuomo at today's news conference announcing the San Francisco-based social networking site had been served with an intent to sue.
The site, which has been around for four years, is open to users who claim to be at least 13-years-old, and in fact, it boasts that is designed to be attractive to teens.
But Cuomo said his office, acting on a consumer complaint, conducted a two month undercover investigation of Tagged and found explicit sexual material, including child pornography on the site and a noticeable lack of response to complaints.
The Attorney General's office says undercover operatives filed 100 complaints and the company responded to 51 of them, just over half, with some offending accounts still open and graphic pictures still posted.
This is the second time in less than a year the attorney general has threatened suit against Tagged. Last November the company was accused of swiping user email lists and using them to send out some 60 million misleading emails to solicit new members.
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.
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
