Hilarious! A few hours after I set up ThePaepae.com’s new Facebook page yesterday, overnight we had a sudden surge of email… with a lot of ‘Please confirm your subscription to our mailing list’ messages.

It seems someone (who? I wonder) had a bit of time on their hands and submitted ThePaepae.com’s email address (not disclosed on the Facebook page, so no ‘leak’ there) to a bunch of mail list subscription pages.

Like a lot of ‘internet marketing’ ruses, these juvenile tricks might have worked in the past, but fortunately they’re pretty easy to spot. See the message (click thumbnail) from the robot gatekeeper administering the Boulder County list server which — as well as shutting down the silly game — gives some insight into the possible motivations for such spoofing tactics:

This is usually done in retribution for having posted something on a public forum which made the perpetrator lose face. …

… in most cases this person will be a technically skilled individual who will know what steps need to be taken in order to hide one’s track. It is usually much easier to identify the perpetrator using traditional investigative methods, such as looking for technically skilled individuals that the victim has recently angered.

Gee, what a hoot. It’s almost like reading someone’s horoscope.