Capital One Has Massive Data Breach Affecting Millions
Author By Sophia VidaPosted on Many were shocked to learn that another massive data breach is now affecting millions of people.
Capital One Financial Corp announced on Monday that personal information including names, addresses, phone numbers and credit scores of about 100 million individuals in the United States and 6 million people in Canada were breached.
The information had been obtained by a Seattle hacker who has already been arrested.
According to the credit card issuer, the hack had been found on July 19th and the Federal Bureau of Investigation had arrested the hacker whose name is Paige A. Thompson.
The 33 year old hacker is accused of breaking through a Capital One firewall to access customer data that the bank had stored on Amazon.com Inc. ’s cloud service, said a federal criminal complaint and people familiar with the matter.
Capital one said that the incident is expected to cost between $100 million and $150 million in 2019, mainly due to customer notifications, credit monitoring and legal support.
Roughly 140,000 social security numbers and 80,000 linked bank account numbers were compromised, said the company.
The bank has said that “the largest category of information accessed was information on consumers and small businesses as of the time they applied for one of our credit card products from 2005 through early 2019. This information included personal information Capital One routinely collects at the time it receives credit card applications, including names, addresses, zip codes/postal codes, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, and self-reported income.”
“While I am grateful that the perpetrator has been caught, I am deeply sorry for what has happened,” said Richard D. Fairbank, the bank’s chairman and chief executive. “I sincerely apologize for the understandable worry this incident must be causing those affected and I am committed to making it right.”
Disclaimer: We have no position Capital One Financial Corp. (NYSE: COF) and have not been compensated for this article.
