A member of the international computer hacking group Anonymous was jailed for two years, eight months on Friday for breaking into the website of Britain's biggest abortion service provider.

James Jeffery, 27, stole around 10,000 records with the details of women who had registered with the site, and replaced the logo of the British Pregnancy Advisory Service with the Anonymous symbol.

He then boasted about the attack on Twitter, using the alias "Pablo Escobar" after the Colombian drug lord who died in 1993, and printing the name and log-on details of a BPAS administrator.

He had pleaded guilty to gaining unauthorised access to data held on the BPAS computer servers, namely personal data held on a contacts database.

Jeffery also admitted gaining unauthorised access to a computer, namely the BPAS website server, with the intention of impairing the operation of that computer.

Police swooped on his home in Wednesbury in the West Midlands region of central England on March 9 after they traced him through his Internet service provider address.

The former software engineering student was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court in south London.

His judge, Michael Gledhill, said Jeffery's actions had caused great harm to the charity through a loss of confidence that may affect people from using the service.

Gledhill also said that had he been able to publish the data as he had threatened, it could have resulted in terrible consequences.

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(c) 2012 AFP