How Not To Forward to a Friend - Email Address Harvesting

While social media networks are being likened to the air we breathe, one company has been crossing the boundaries of 'forward to a friend' on social media networks as a means of email list growth.

Email's forwarding capabilities make it a great potential list-grower for email marketers. However, the power to forward messages should always remain with the subscriber, not the company. Social media site, Tagged is being sued by two California residents for allegedly accessing their email address books and sending out invitations to their friends to join without consent.

In the complaint, Miriam Slater of Santa Barbara, California claims she 'received a Tagged email on June 6 that purported to be from an acquaintance who wanted to share photos'. She then 'visited the site and provided the company with information, but only because she wanted to view the pictures... Tagged never disclosed that she was actually registering to join the site or that it would harvest her email addresses and then solicit those contacts.'

Somewhere along the line there has been a massive breach of trust. Email marketing must be built on honesty and transparency in order to be successful. In his company's defence, Tagged CEO, Greg Tseng said "From this feedback we learned that, simply put, it was too easy for people to quickly go through the registration process and unintentionally invite their friends to join them on Tagged."

Internet expert, Venkat Balasubramani suspects Tagged will escape without charge as it only accessed online email clients such as Gmail, as opposed to hacking computers directly, and because no money has been lost as a result. However, if businesses wish to preserve their reputation while growing their mailing lists through 'forward to a friend', they will have to observe the email marketing best practices we and other email clients have been advocating, including:

• Providing an un-checked opt-in tick box for visitors to join
• Include information on your registration & privacy policies
• Ask to opt-in all new contacts acquired through a 'forward to a friend' programme