A man who claimed in YouTube videos that he had directed others to poison millions of containers of Gerber baby food with the intent to kill babies was arrested on Thursday, federal prosecutors said.

Prosecutors said Gerber had not found any evidence that its product had been tampered with, and the man was charged with making threats and falsely claiming to have tampered with a consumer product.

Anton Dunn, 42, who called himself “Trashman,” was behind a series of videos posted on YouTube and other sites. The videos claimed that Gerber employees acting at his direction had poisoned millions of bottles of baby food, said prosecutors at Manhattan federal court.

In several videos, Dunn — wearing a black mask — said the baby food had been poisoned with cyanide, prosecutors said.

A spokesman for Gerber, which is owned by Switzerland-based Nestle SA, said in a statement the company stands behind the safety of its products.

China’s blocking of Web sites has embarrassed the International Olympic Committee, but a computer security expert said on Thursday that visitors to Beijing also needed to protect their data from prying eyes.

“People who are going to China should take a clean computer, one with no data at all,” said Phil Dunkelberger, chief executive of security software firm PGP Corp.

Travelers carrying smart cell phones, blackberries or laptop computers could unwittingly be offering up sensitive personal or business information to officials who monitor state-controlled telecommunications carriers, Dunkelberger said.

He said that without data encryption, executives could have business plans or designs pilfered, while journalists’ lists of contacts could be exposed, putting sources at risk.

Dunkelberger said that during unrest in Tibet in March, overseas Tibetan activists found their computer systems under heavy pressure from Chinese security agencies trying to trace digital communications.

“What the Chinese tried to do was infiltrate their security to see who in China the Tibet movement was talking to,” he said.