• by Wendy Davis  @wendyndavis, January 28, 2010

Social networking site Tagged has won a $200,000 default judgment against an individual who allegedly spammed Tagged members by sending them messages with links to an adult dating Web site.

In a ruling issued this week, U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup in the northern district of California found that Erik Vogeler sent messages to 6,079 Tagged users and assessed damages of $25 per violation for a total of $151,975. Alsup also ordered Vogeler to pay Tagged $50,000 in attorneys' fees and to refrain from sending commercial emails through the Tagged.com site in the future. Vogeler didn't appear in court to defend himself.

Tagged alleged in the lawsuit that the messages sent by Vogeler violated the federal CAN-SPAM statute because they had "false and misleading header information." The company alleged that Vogeler's actions "were calculated to lead Tagged users who received defendant's messages to believe that the emails came from other Tagged users who sought them out for personal and social reasons," according to the court documents.

Ironically, in a separate lawsuit, Tagged was accused of sending email solicitations to people that appeared to come from their friends. In August, two California residents sued Tagged for allegedly harvesting their email contacts and then sending their friends' invitations to join the site that seemed to have come from users themselves.

Last year, law enforcement officials in New York and Texas extracted $750,000 from Tagged to settle investigations that the company engaged in deceptive email marketing.

Tagged also revamped its registration procedures after meeting with staff from the New York State Attorney General's office.