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Thorough Thieves Steal Canadian Student's Thesis, Backup, Research

by Terrence O'Brien on August 30, 2010 at 12:55 PM

John Boldt
This is John Boldt, a graduate student at the University of Calgary. This past Wednesday, he was out for a run in Edworthy Park when some heartless thief (or thieves) broke into his car, and stole his laptop, which contained his research, notes and partially complete thesis. Now, Boldt was smarter than many users, and backed up all of his work to an external hard drive. But it too was swiped.

Boldt has said that, if he isn't able to recover his work, he may have to drop out of school. For that reason, he is offering a cash reward for the return of his laptop. He told CTV.ca, "The computer can be replaced. It's what's on it that can't. Even if they want to save everything on a hard drive and give me that, that's fantastic." Of course, he could have (and should have) saved online using services like Dropbox or Google Docs, or just kept his back-up drive in a different place than his computer. (Those tactics are not only helpful in instances of theft, but essential in the event of a fire or flood, too). Still, a student without research and a missing thesis is a sad sight indeed, so here's to catching the thieves.

Tags: backup, crime, education, harddrive, laptop, storage, theft

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