Dumb Criminal / Dumb Victim

From MSNBC/Washington Post comes this story of two very stupid people:

She found her master�s degree in a trash can
College student recovers only copy of thesis on stolen jump drive

When Linda Cerniglia went back to school, it took her almost seven years to get through all the prerequisites, the labs, the research. And it took a thief just moments to grab her purse, with the only copy of her master's thesis stored on a tiny jump drive inside.

And the theft:

One afternoon in September at Carderock Park, after doing some perfectionist tweaking of her almost-finished thesis, Cerniglia locked her things in the car. She went for a run along the C&O Canal, reveling in how great it felt to be almost done.

An hour or so later at her home in Bethesda, she realized her purse was gone. Her bank cards, driver's license, Social Security card, $1,000 worth of checks from clients -- she didn't care. But the jump drive was in the purse. And she still had not made a backup, even after hearing Doldo's "the dog ate my thesis" story.

She ultimately found the jump-drive in a Wendy's dumpster and the crook was caught on store cameras after using one of her credit cards. The cops got fingerprints to confirm his identity. Sheesh! I can see using a school computer and only having the jump drive to store your data but jeez -- email the thing to your personal mailbox, bring a second jump-drive, bring a CD-ROM disk as well -- anything... Like I tell my clients -- crashes and data losses are like car accidents, it doesn't happen very often but it will. It is not a case of if, it is a case of when...