Editor's Note, 2/17/10: See The Olympic skier known as 'spam king' for more recent coverage of Dale Begg-Smith.

Dale Begg-Smith's name keeps popping up in all the wrong places, like much of the insidious internet spyware that he has been responsible for peddling and pushing. The Herald has followed a trail of digital fingerprints scattered over the web which shows Mr Begg-Smith's long and rewarding involvement in the distribution of "malicious software" - otherwise known as malware, spyware and adware.

The Australian press is taking a dim view of Dale Begg-Smith's history of questionable online activities. The Australian has an article here and The Sidney Morning Herald has a longer, more detailed write up here

The article links to 2 posts at StopScum.com directed to Begg-Smith.

You can run but you can't hide. If you fail to answer reporters questions in a candid and detailed manner, lots of folks will poke around and discover your checkered past. You may have won an Olympic Gold Medal, Mr. Dale Begg-Smith who runs/ran AdsCPM, but your checkered past is back to haunt you. February 20, 2006 - Don't miss my follow up article to this entry.

There's a link to this forum discussion that includes posts by Begg-Smith himself in May 2002 with the username adscpm. He signed the post Dale Begg-Smith and posted about his business:

We offer popunders with up to $2.25cpm depending on the type of pop you choose. We have different types depending on how user friendly you like to be. For large sites with over 500k unqiue visitors per day we even do payment after a few days to make sure they know we pay. Publishers come first so we do everything to make sure everyone know we pay ontime. Being a publisher myself in the past I know that I would have liked to been paid after a few day with an ad network to insure that I trust them.

The Sidney Morning Herald links to a page in the internet archive from Begg-Smith's company AdsCPM, (now CPM Media), where they boast of doing 20,000,000 pops per day.

Welcome to Adscpm.com. Ranked top 500 on alexa.com, we are one of the highest traffic advertising agencies on the web. Our download partner does 100,000 software downloads a day. Adscpm.com does 20,000,000 pops a day.

This recent forum discussion about Begg-Smith and his business history lists some of the domains associated with Begg-Smith's business and the domain registration info. There is a thread at SpywareWarrior as well with a post by Andrew Clover (username bobince) of Doxdesk database of parasites fame, with a list of domains owned by CPM Media, Inc. Andrew also commented:

CPM Media and their many many aliases* were one of the heaviest users of browser security exploits outside of the CWS complex. Their abuse of flaws to install large quantities of their own and affiliate spyware is certainly illegal under hacking laws in many countries. Begg-Smith's business is not just unethical but solidly criminal.

One thing's for certain, Begg-Smith and his spokepersons might try to deny or hide his history, but indisputable evidence remains on the internet viewable by anyone taking the time to find it.