Don't get "Tagged.com"

Are you into social networking? I'm slowly learning about the subject to increase my online presence to homebuyers and sellers.

Recently, a friend from another island sent me an invite to join Tagged.com. It seemed innocent enough, like joining Facebook or MySpace.

I followed the link and went through the lengthy signup. It had lots of options that I wasn't interested in. Despite that, I kept going. The site requested my phone number. I tried skipping that portion but it seemed that I had to include my number and receive a text message with a PIN to continue. In a moment of poor judgement I did continue with the account signup.

After signing up, I learned that another friend of mine was a member of Tagged (that makes two). I thought that was cool and looked at my two friends' profiles. Not much there but their names and a pic or two.

Then the bad stuff started happening. First I noticed that the innocent looking accounts and photos displayed on the Tagged website when I signed up were replaced with naughty looking 20-something year old females. They had account names like "Horny1". More annoying were the text messages sent to my phone. The messages came almost daily.

Text messages were something like this:

"Ludacris' pool house destroyed by a fire".

"Jay Z to perform in Detroit".

First, I have never listened to their music and am not the least bit interested.

Second, my cellphone plan charges me for each text message. It was very annoying to be paying for a useless text message.

I went back to the Tagged website and disabled all messaging options. It didn't include a box for discontinuing text messages but I hoped it would work. The next day I received another useless text message.

Going back to the Tagged website, I looked for a "contact us" link and didn't find one. So I cancelled my account. A box appeared asking why I was cancelling and I mentioned the text messages. Despite cancelling the account, the text messages continued.

I called my cellular provider, Verizon and asked them for help. The representative told me to reply to a text with the word "Stop". I did so and quickly received a response saying I was unsubscribed to the text service.

The representative also told me, sites like Tagged usually charge a monthly subscription fee for the text messages! You mean I actually have to pay for this headache? Yes. He said a typical bill is $10 per month. I must have missed that when I clicked the Terms of Service box without reading the terms.

Verizon has an option where any text service that tries to send you a message is automatically blocked. Instead, the customer receives a text from Verizon asking if he/she elects to receive the premium messages, knowing the there will be a fee. I said "Yes" to that! No more junk text messages for me!