The news mailing list for the Tab has been hijacked by pranksters, it appears.

The mysterious joker has used the email address for the mailing list to sign up for various internet services, including the pornography site RedTube and even UKIP Online.

Would-be news writers signed up to the mailing list received an email from UKIP welcoming them as “friend” and asking if they could donate £10 to assist UKIP’s campaign at the upcoming election.

It is unclear who originally began signing up to services with the mailing list address, but it could have arisen after multiple people replied to the original email asking to unsubscribe; messages which were then relayed to all subscribed would-be writers.

L.Z. Mao pleaded, “[I’ve] been on the list for 3 years. i've [sic] served my time now … please let me go,” whilst J.T. Baird, a graduate student, also asked to be removed from the mailing list.

Baird wrote: “I've never been to a meeting and I doubt I ever will now that I've left. I've asked and asked and you still haven't taken me off ... TAKE ME OFF. NOW.”

This led to all subscribed addresses receiving multiple emails, and may have led some students to abuse the mailing list by signing up to UKIP and pornographic sites.

Tim Squirrell, the current president of the Cambridge Union Society and former Tab columnist, weighed in on the multiple requests to unsubscribe by replying, “jesus fuck stop replying all you’re meant to be intelligent people”.

The incident is reminiscent of a similar saga at University College London, entitled ‘Bellogate’, after the provost and president Michael Arthur emailed the word ‘bello’ to a mailing list of 29,000 students.

By hitting ‘reply all’, students took advantage of the apparent accident by signing up to sites such as GayPornTalent.com, the Coldplay fan club and dating site OKCupid, for which confirmation emails were sent out to all students.

The Tab has sent out a final message to their mailing list apologising for the incident.

"We're sorry things got out of control," writes editor in chief Patrick Brooks, "Due to the fact that the tab team completely changes over all the time despite my best efforts we've been unable to actually access the list or find a way to unsubscribe people or delete it."

Brooks announced the mailing list would not be used to communicate with writers in the future; "we're just going to stop using this list - we won't send you any more emails. This ends today."