{"id":315,"date":"2011-03-22T11:27:12","date_gmt":"2011-03-22T18:27:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/?p=315"},"modified":"2025-12-12T14:55:38","modified_gmt":"2025-12-12T22:55:38","slug":"18-year-old-catches-thief-using-backblaze","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/18-year-old-catches-thief-using-backblaze\/","title":{"rendered":"18-Year-Old Catches Thief Using Backblaze"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter\" src=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-thief-caught2.jpg\" alt=\"Thief-caught-with-Backblaze\" \/><\/p>\n<p id=\"bzdropcap\">We hear from customers all the time who were able restore data using our online <a href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/cloud-storage\/solutions\/backup-and-archive\">backup service<\/a> after their laptop died or was stolen. Sometimes our customers even catch the thief using Backblaze such as this <a href=\"\/blog\/digital-007-outwitting-the-thief\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Digital 007<\/a> that wrote us a year ago.<\/p>\n<p>It this case, <a href=\"http:\/\/markbao.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mark Bao<\/a> was the Digital 007 and caught a bit of entertaining material on the thief in the process. Bao is an 18-year-old founder of several startups and non-profits. A couple months ago his laptop was stolen and with a bit of ingenuity, Bao has found out a number of items about the thief:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>That he lives close by.<\/li>\n<li>That he has a Facebook page.<\/li>\n<li>And that he likes to record himself dancing to Travis Porter&#8217;s &#8220;Make It Rain.&#8221;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>At this point, not only can Mark get all of his own data restored, but the police will likely have a pretty easy time recovering that laptop.<\/p>\n<p>Read about it and watch the video at <a href=\"https:\/\/observer.com\/2011\/05\/dont-steal-computer-from-people-who-know-how-to-use-computers-part-deux\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Beta Beat<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/thenextweb.com\/shareables\/2011\/03\/22\/the-awesome-story-of-the-stolen-laptop-and-one-very-embarrassing-video\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Story on The Next Web<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update<\/strong>: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.boston.com\/business\/technology\/innoeco\/2011\/04\/alleged_bentley_laptop_thief_m.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Thief heads to court<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We hear from customers all the time who were able restore data using our online backup service after their laptop died or was stolen. Sometimes our customers even catch the thief using Backblaze such as this Digital 007 that wrote us a year ago. It this case, Mark Bao was the Digital 007 and caught&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/18-year-old-catches-thief-using-backblaze\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">18-Year-Old Catches Thief Using Backblaze<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":90625,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[131,10,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-backblaze-bits","category-backblaze-fun","category-customer-stories","entry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>How an 18-Year-Old Used Computer Backup to Catch a Laptop Thief<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"We hear from customers all the time who were able restore data using our online backup service after their laptop died or was stolen. Sometimes our\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/18-year-old-catches-thief-using-backblaze\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How an 18-Year-Old Used Computer Backup to Catch a Laptop Thief\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"We hear from customers all the time who were able restore data using our online backup service after their laptop died or was stolen. Sometimes our\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.backblaze.com\/blog\/18-year-old-catches-thief-using-backblaze\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Backblaze Blog | Cloud Storage &amp; Cloud Backup\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/backblaze\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-03-22T18:27:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-12T22:55:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-thief-caught2.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"560\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"188\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Gleb Budman\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:creator\" content=\"@backblaze\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@backblaze\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Gleb Budman\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"1 minute\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"How an 18-Year-Old Used Computer Backup to Catch a Laptop Thief","description":"We hear from customers all the time who were able restore data using our online backup service after their laptop died or was stolen. 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Gleb has served as a member of our board of directors since 2009 and as chairperson since January 2021. Prior to Backblaze, Gleb was the senior director of product management at SonicWall and the vice president of products at MailFrontier, which was acquired by SonicWall. Before that, he served in a senior position at Kendara, which was acquired by Excite@Home, and previously founded and successfully exited two other startup companies.","url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/author\/gleb\/"}]}},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/06\/blog-thief-caught2.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=315"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/315\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/90625"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/backblazeprod.wpenginepowered.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}