Stolen backup tape has more than 200,000 Ohio taxpayer records

Columbus (OH) – A stolen backup tape probably contains the taxpayer records of more than 200,000 Ohio state residents and employees. At a press conference, Ohio Governor Ted Strickland said the state is still putting together a list of sensitive information that could have been on the tape that was stolen out of an intern’s car on June 10th.

Strickland says investigators are combing through a second tape, which is an identical copy of the stolen tape. So far they know that the tape has banking information, addresses and phone numbers of thousands of state residents and employees. The list ranges from welfare recipients, non-university state employees and even lottery winners who haven’t cash their checks.

The tape was not encrypted, but Strickland assures everyone that the thief would need detailed knowledge and hardware to access the data. However, we think that it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to find the appropriate player and there are only a handful of popular backup and restore programs used in the server environments. Heck, the thief could probably find a player just by looking at the tape and inputting its model number into Google.

No explanation has yet been given on why the intern was driving around with the backup tape.

UPDATE - The intern was one of four workers who took home the backup tapes on a rotating basis. According to Strickland, the tape tape was stolen out of the intern’s UNLOCKED (our emphasis) car at his apartment complex.