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When anti-abortion groups started collecting data frantically, protesters also launched hacking attacks.
Text｜Editor by Du Chen｜Vicky Xiao
Source: Silicon Stars
The online edition of Time magazine reported a very outrageous incident yesterday:
A 28-year-old girl named Ashley was pregnant and wanted information on abortion procedures. So she searched the Internet for related services, and she came up with a website called Choices Dallas that offered “pre-screening abortion counseling.”
When she passed, as soon as she entered the door, she saw that all the staff were not wearing masks, and the staff were still wearing crosses, which made Ashley pay attention. Her medical condition put her at high risk for an ectopic pregnancy, and a consultant at the agency told her she could continue the ectopic pregnancy to term if she was “careful” and urged her to delay the decision to have an abortion.
In other words, she actually entered an anti-abortion agency disguised as an abortion clinic. Good thing she wasn’t fooled. Faced with the suggestion of a “medical consultant”, she asked back, “I think you’re trying to trick me into waiting until abortion is no longer legal (more than enough pregnancy time), right?”
Ashley’s story is not an exception. The agencies’ parent companies provide employees with training in Google Ads, SEO and social marketing to ensure they appear at the top of search results. And that’s just one of the ways they’re skilled at preventing women from having abortions.
Long before the U.S. Supreme Court outright overturned Roe v. Wade last Friday, pro and anti-abortion rights groups were already using technological tools to wage a war.
| Data and technology, ammunition for anti-abortion activists
The institution Ashley accidentally stepped into, the Prestonwood Pregancy Center, is a typical “crisis pregnancey center,” an institution that uses varying degrees of camouflage to induce visitors not to have abortions.
Its website puts “abortion” on the first item of the official website menu, which is very eye-catching, but in fact it does not mention whether this institution is qualified to provide abortion surgery/drug prescriptions, although there are several on the website. Photos of healthcare workers and medical equipment.
Take, for example, this agency masquerading as an abortion clinic, with lots of ads and keyword rankings on Google. The Silicon Stars did a test, just search for Dallas+ related keywords, or use a VPN to fake the location to the local area, and then search, this agency almost always appears in the top position. In addition, the agency will use keywords such as “free service” to attract attention, and use keywords such as “choice” and “you are the person we care about most” to reduce the vigilance of search users.
The most outrageous thing is that the vast majority of photos on its website feature models with black, brown and yellow skins—obviously targeting those with poorer financial means who are most likely to suffer health and safety problems due to the inability to pay for various abortion-related expenses. threatened minorities.
The site just published an article yesterday with keywords that appealed to female users who searched for “what should I do if I want an abortion after Roe v. Wade is overturned.” Above image credit: Prestonwood Pregnancy Center
Really don’t underestimate the deceitful ability of this kind of scam. First, these institutions are often backed by conservatives and some ultra-conservative church-funded nonprofits, so they can provide so-called “free services.” Secondly, many people who search for abortion clinics are low-income people without reliable insurance, not to mention that they are more mentally stressed when they are in a state of pregnancy/probable pregnancy. At this time, someone provides free testing services, and they “explore their hearts and lungs” with her. ” suggested to keep the child, and promised more services in the future – just imagine who can guarantee that he will not be fooled?
Citing figures, Time said there are now three times as many facilities as legal abortion clinics, and the advantage is growing. And, Silicon Valley readers, don’t think you’re immune to being in California: California now has 179 crisis pregnancy centers on record, 20 percent more than actual abortion clinics.
The result: Americans searching for abortion services online in the future will be fooled if they are not careful.
Not only the search results, according to Bloomberg, some agencies will even place ads on TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram, such as using Snapchat’s social map feature “Snap Map” to place virtual pins called “pregnancy” or “abortion”, thereby More efficiently lure more young netizens into the fake abortion clinics they promote.
Even some well-known crisis pregnancy centers have developed their own CRM software to allow chain agencies across the country to “synchronize” data — which in turn will further increase the risk of women accessing abortion services across states.
And it’s not over yet. If you think you can get away with getting out of these fake clinics quickly, then you still underestimate the ability of these anti-abortion agencies to work.
In abortion clinic parking lots, pro-abortion activists have also invented a new method of data collection: Wi-Fi hijacking. The specific method is to open a public wireless network without a password, change the SSID to “abortion information”, and automatically pop up anti-abortion propaganda on the connected device. A more advanced approach is to record the logged-in user’s device information, identity information, and contact information.
I have to say that the technological means of privacy sniffing by anti-abortion activists are really “advancing with the times”. Even period-tracking apps will become a high-risk channel for privacy leaks after Roe v. Wade is overturned.
A menstrual tracking app commonly used by female users, the data in it is easy to see how many weeks the user is pregnant. Women who use these apps are likely to be targeted if data is bought or leaked.
Among several well-known applications, Flo issued a statement saying that it will launch an anonymous mode, which allows users to remove the association between personally identifiable information and accounts; Clue said that the company is located in Europe, and the behavior of user data processing and transactions is subject to GDPR and other laws.
However, Stardust, another well-known women’s health app, is not so reliable. The company officially claims that data exchanges with data brokers are anonymous and encrypted. However, after analyzing its application, security experts found that the data the company provided to third-party data analysis and advertising service platforms included users’ unencrypted mobile phones. Number.
It has to be said that today, the institutions and personnel involved in the anti-abortion movement have developed a comprehensive set of data collection, tracking, identification and reporting processes.
For example, in Charlotte, the largest city in North Carolina, there are anti-abortion protesters all year round outside the abortion clinic. These anti-abortion demonstrators are armed with mobile phones, cameras and other devices to record the appearance and license plate numbers of people who visit the clinic. The identities, phone numbers and other information of staff and visitors at these clinics will be leaked, and home addresses will be stuffed with anti-abortion propaganda materials.
Anti-abortion activists demonstrate outside the clinic and record information from visitors Photo: Heather Mobley/Charlotte Option
| Fighting magic with magic, hackers are out
While anti-abortion activists have been armed to the teeth with technology, pro-abortion rights supporters are largely powerless.
In order to protect women’s health and basic rights, a hacker group decided to stand up and give a big middle finger to anti-abortion activists: SiegedSec, a notorious Western hacker group in recent months, suddenly issued a statement last weekend, saying that it has The attack on the Kentucky and Arkansas state government databases where abortion laws are in effect has yielded roughly 8GB of data.
“Like many, we also support choosing a person who should not be denied access to abortion services. In an effort to put pressure on the U.S. government, we are hereby leaking documents and documents on government servers in Kentucky and Arkansas, including large numbers of government employees of personally identifiable information and more, totaling approximately 7-8GB”
SiegedSec also said that the main target of the latter attack will expand to more anti-abortion groups, including but not limited to institutions and governments.
But SiegedSec really isn’t the first hacker group to get angry.
As early as last year, when Texas passed the local anti-abortion trigger law, the local anti-abortion agency set up a reporting website Pro-life Whistleblower. As a result, within a few days, the website was attacked by DDoS. It is believed that hackers should use automated scripts and frantically use the information submission function of the website. But fortunately, the security architecture of the website is not bad, and the hackers did not succeed.
The person in charge of the website said that the attack had been reported to the FBI, which completely annoyed netizens. Under the promotion of several TikTok influencers, this time there was no hacker participation at all, and a large number of netizens went to this website themselves and submitted a large number of wrong and false reporting information.
For example, the following, reported Dr. Nick Rivera of Springfield Township, to perform an abortion operation on his own mother to abort himself:
There is also a report that Governor Abbott does not let children wear masks is against their lives, and the source of evidence is “his mouth”:
There are also those who asked anti-abortion groups to find the mistresses and girlfriends of Texas politicians, “they still have the receipts”:
There are more copy-pasted strange texts, because they are too outrageous, they will not be translated…
Having said that, now that the Roe v. Wade case has been overturned, women’s right to choose abortion services and the right to protect their own health and safety are no longer protected by the Constitution, and have returned to the state level after all.
In this case, if supporters of the right to choose abortion, if they want to bring about change, the only legal way is to re-establish the protection of these rights through legislation at the state and federal level. However, today’s American political circles are clearly divided and polarized. Even where one party has a numerical advantage, a minority of parties can use various means to obstruct the legislative agenda, and it is extremely rare for two parties to support and cooperate to pass bills.
Under such circumstances, is it only the most effective way to use magic to fight against magic?
Alas, that’s irritating and ridiculous.
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