Hacker who stole data on abortion website jailed

A computer hacker from the West Midlands who broke into the website of Britain's biggest abortion provider was today starting a jail sentence of two years and eight months.

James Jeffery targeted the British Pregnancy Advisory Service because he disagreed with the decisions of two women he knew to terminate their pregnancies, London's Southwark Crown Court heard yesterday.

The 27-year-old, of Wednesbury, stole about 10,000 database records containing the personal details of women which he later intended to publish.

Mr Daniel Higgins, prosecuting, told the court that Jeffery also defaced the website's homepage with the logo of the hacking group Anonymous, of which he was a part-time member, and posted an anti-abortion message.

He signed off using his online alias Pablo Escobar – named after a Colombian drug lord, Mr Higgins said.

The former University of Wolverhampton software engineering student then boasted about his hacking feat on social networking site Twitter.

Jeffery had admitted two offences under the Computer Misuse Act at an earlier hearing.

Police swooped on his Castle Street home, in the early hours of March 9, after they traced him through his IP address. When Jeffery was arrested, police found his computer in the process of being wiped clean.

It was heard that he intended to publish the data, including names, email addresses on an online sharing site but later backed down.