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2,500 copycat hack attempts on abortion provider site – report

BPAS under siege following hacker's arrest

Five weeks after a man was cuffed by police for swiping around 10,000 records of women who registered with British Pregnancy Advisory Service (BPAS), the site remains under sustained hack attempts, the BBC reports.

The man in question – 27-year-old James Jeffery from Wednesbury, West Midlands – was jailed for two years and eight months over a hacking attack against Britain's biggest abortion provider in March this year.

But since his arrest, the BBC said that other unsuccessful hack attempts on BPAS's systems have happened around 2,500 times, with around half of the IP addresses of the computers used originating from the US, which did not mean that all or indeed any of the miscreants were necessarily located Stateside.

The abortion provider – which also provides emergency contraception, free pregnancy testing and vasectomy services – said that the details of women who had registered with the site were safeguarded against the failed attacks.

At the time of Jeffery's sentencing earlier this week, BPAS chief executive Ann Furedi said:

"This was one of the most extreme examples of anti-abortion activity we have seen. We are grateful to the police for the swift action they took to apprehend Mr Jeffery and are glad the matter is now resolved."

The provider hears from roughly 60,000 women and supervises around 53,000 abortions in the UK each year. ®

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