An American man has been arrested and charged with hacking into the computers of at least two companies.

Daniel Baas, 24, of Milford, Ohio, was arrested and charged Friday with downloading sensitive information from Acxiom Corp. in Little Rock, Ark.

According to police in Hamilton County, Ohio, Baas was already in custody when he was charged with entering Acxiom's system without authorization and copying information. The police report lists Dec. 10, 2002, as the date he allegedly hacked into Acxiom's system.

Baas is being held in Hamilton County Jail on US$100,000 bond, according to police.

On Aug. 1, Baas, whose hacker alias is Epitaph, was charged with two counts of unauthorized use of a computer and stealing information from Market Intelligence Group LLC, his former employer. And on June 3 he was charged with one count of hacking into the computer system of Market Intelligence.

Timothy Smith, Baas's Cincinnati-based lawyer, couldn't be reached for comment.

Last week, Acxiom said the hacker was an employee of an Acxiom client. At that time, Acxiom said the unauthorized access occurred as information was being exchanged between it and some of its clients via a file transfer protocol server. It also said it didn't know about the breach until being contacted by an Ohio law enforcement agency.

Acxiom couldn't be reached for further comment Tuesday.