PLUG > Mailing List Spam > Alex Camponi

What we know of Alex's amateur spamming activities: Curious as to what his motivations were, I confronted Alex with this information in an email: 
Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2007 04:45:03 -0800
From: "Michael C. Toren" <mct@toren.net>
To: alex camponi <alex.camponi@gmail.com>
Cc: Tobias DiPasquale <...@cbcg.net>, Matthew Rosewarne <...@inoutbox.com>
Subject: [Balug-Talk] Ron Paul in PimpMyDaughter Poll (fwd)

Yes, this one is somewhat strange, indeed.

You know, Alex, if you hadn't blundered your little venture into spamming
so terribly, I wouldn't have even bothered responding to you -- I'd have
just dropped your ass in my blacklist and be done with it.  But, I'm
curious about a few things.  First, let's summarize what we know:

You're located outside of London, connected to the world through a DSL
line owned by Simon Withers and Advanced PC Solutions.  From your Ubuntu
workstation, you googled for "linux user group mailing lists" to spam.
You subscribed to the PLUG list at 17:02 Eastern, confirmed your
subscription 5 minutes later, and then about 15 minutes later send out
your bogus Ron Paul link.  Toby calls you on it, and an hour later you
apologize, on-list.  Apparently it wasn't very heartfelt, though, as a
half hour later you send the *exact same message* to another LUG list,
3,000 miles away.

I don't take too kindly to people abusing my mail server.

You already apologize to Toby on-list, so I know that there's a human
reading the other end of this gmail account.  So, tell me:  Why is a Brit
distributing links to a blog post about a US Presidential candidate?
There are no advertisements on that site, so what do you get out of
driving traffic there?  Why are you, at least in part, targeting Linux
users groups, and how many other lists did you hit tonight?

Entertain me with a response, and just maybe I won't report you to your
ISP, and the owner of the DSL line.

-mct

In this response, Alex admits to spamming between 10 and 20 other LUG lists, but gives no clear indication of why he wanted to distribute the Ron Paul link to Linux users: 

Date: Sat, 24 Nov 2007 13:36:01 +0000
From: "alex camponi" <alex.camponi@gmail.com>
To: "Michael C. Toren" <mct@toren.net>
Subject: Re: [Balug-Talk] Ron Paul in PimpMyDaughter Poll (fwd)

Wow!  I knew it was possible to find the information you quoted but I didn't
think that anyone would bother to do it.  To answer some of your questions....

> Why is a Brit distributing links to a blog post about a US Presidential
> candidate?

I don't have that much interest in US politics it's true.

> There are no advertisements on that site, so what do you get out of
> driving traffic there?

I can't answer that question I'm afraid. Not because it's sinister but
because it's very, very silly + a bit personal.

> Why are you, at least in part, targeting Linux users groups,

I'm targeting LUGs because I am an Ubuntu user and reading contributions
after i post the link helps me to learn more about Linux. I'm not exactly
a newbie - but I'm no techie and every little helps. I wouldn't dream of
sending a scam link or traffic generating site link to a LUG mailing list.
The reason why I'm posting this link is because the site is sort of
interesting and I thought that people would mind less than if....

> and how many other lists did you hit tonight?

I don't have an exact number but maybe 10-20.

> Entertain me with a response, and just maybe I won't report you to your
> ISP, and the owner of the DSL line.

Thanks Michael. If you choose to report me then I'll completely understand.
Regardless of what you decide, it won't happen again.

Alex

If you know of other LUGs that Alex hit, or have other relevant log entries, let us know.

Update, 2007-12-12:

Now that the webcrawlers have had some time to re-index a number of the mailing list archive websites around the world, Googling for the culprit's name reveals other lists that were hit:

$Id: index.html 140 2007-12-12 09:18:08Z mct $