Contact scraping is on the rise in certain social networks.

People using certain social network sites like Tagged.com, Life.com or Desktopdating.com may have seen an increase or even fallen victim of an annoying practice called "contact scraping."
This is a deceptive way used by some of these Web sites to make their users become unwittingly spammers.
Here how it works: Just like those old chain letters, by signing up to these sites and providing them with your real e-mail address full of your contact list and a password, without your express consent or even your knowledge, these sites dig into that contact list and generate an invitation on your name to everyone in it, to click on the site and view some of your pictures. Of course, the sites do not know that you have pictures that you want to share or with whom to share them. So the sent invitations will go to everyone on that list, even to people that you just added to your list, or to people that you are not that acquainted with. In other words, you are sending invitations to see something that may not exist, to people that you are not buddy with. Embarrassing? And this is just the beginning; what follow next will shame you even more.
Once your "friends" got to these sites to see your pictures, they are asked to click on a link that will prompt them to enter their own e-mail address and a password before viewing those "pictures." And right there, they fall into the trap, agreeing to sign-up to the site as a new user and unsuspiciously, giving away their contact lists in their e-mail address for it to be mined by some special software and therefore, contributing to the grow of the "pot."
You may be asking yourself: "What is for these companies to gain?" After all, unlike the old phishing practice where the perpetrators actually try to get get your personal information to defraud you of your identity or your riches, in these case, all that these companies are after, is you as a number, to boost their users population. They are not harmful in the same vein as phishing, but embarrassing and annoying enough to make you look like the village idiot.
But with more people falling victims of this practice, there is a growing concern among some law enforcement in the country and some of them have started to pay more attention. The Wall Street Journal reports that New York attorney general is planning to sue Tagged.com for "deceptive email-marketing practices and invasion of privacy."scrutinitytake a closer look


For more, see NYTimes.com