New York's attorney general charged Thursday that »Tagged.com stole the identities of more than 60 million Internet users worldwide — by sending e-mails that raided their private accounts.

Cuomo said Tagged acquired most of them fraudulently, sending unsuspecting recipients e-mails that urged them to view private photos posted by friends.

The message read: "(name of friend) sent you photos on Tagged."

When recipients tried to access the photos, Cuomo said they would in effect become new members of the site — without ever seeing any photos. Recipients' e-mail address books would then be lifted, the attorney general said.

Cuomo said Tagged's problems went far beyond technical glitches.

"This very virulent form of spam is the online equivalent of breaking into a home, stealing address books, and sending phony mail to all of an individual's personal contacts," Cuomo said.

The system was set up so that a user was asked whether the sender of the photos was a friend, then suggesting that if the recipient didn't respond, the friend "may think you said no" (accompanied by a sad face icon).

Any click resulted in the same thing, Cuomo said: Every person on a user's contact list received an e-mail that again read, "(name of user) sent you photos on Tagged." The site then released a flood of offers for everything from sweepstakes to other services.

By the time a recipient realized there were no photos, it was too late.