Why Abortion Access Organizations Are Suing Anti-Choice Internet Trolls

Melanie Ehrenkranz
May 9, 2018

For grassroots pro-choice organizations, visibility is a double-edged sword. This was especially clear during the National Abortion Access Bowl-a-Thon cyberattack two years ago. For the National Network of Abortion Funds (NNAF), which led the event, more visibility meant the potential to raise more money to help those in need of abortion access. It also made them a target of vitriolic anti-choice trolls.

During the 2016 Bowl-a-Thon, trolls pledged $66 billion in fraudulent donations, took down the fundraiser website with a DDoS attack, and created fake donor pages to phish for supporters’ personal information. Fake fundraising accounts included names like “qwerty,” “adolph hitler,” and “holifuk.” Forensics reports also indicate that ahead of the cyberattack, hackers placed malicious code on the fundraising website which allowed them to gather donors’ personal information and credit card details from a payment page, according to a complaint filed by NNAF.

continued: https://gizmodo.com/why-abortion-access-organizations-are-suing-anti-choice-1825514431