Quick turnaround, I must say.
Earlier today, Capital One announced that they suffered a massive data breach on July 19th, compromising the data of over 100 million customers across the US and Canada. According to Capital One, the data lost included names, addresses and phone numbers. Thankfully, however, credit card numbers were not stolen. From their announcement:
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. Beyond the credit card application data, the individual also obtained portions of credit card customer data, including:
– Customer status data, e.g., credit scores, credit limits, balances, payment history, contact information
– Fragments of transaction data from a total of 23 days during 2016, 2017 and 2018
No bank account numbers or Social Security numbers were compromised, other than:
– About 140,000 Social Security numbers of our credit card customers
– About 80,000 linked bank account numbers of our secured credit card customers
For our Canadian credit card customers, approximately 1 million Social Insurance Numbers were compromised in this incident.
Capital One doesn’t believe that the data has been used for fraud, but plans to continue investigating the damage caused by the breach.
Per the announcement, police have made an arrest in the case. Former Seattle technology company software engineer Paige Thompson, 33, was arrested under charges of computer fraud and abuse. She is due to appear in court August 1st. If found guilty, she could face a maximum sentence of five years in prison and a $250,000 fine.
On Capital One’s behalf, chairman and CEO Richard D. Fairbank made the following statement:
While I am grateful that the perpetrator has been caught, I am deeply sorry for what has happened. I sincerely apologize for the understandable worry this incident must be causing those affected and I am committed to making it right.
Richard D. Fairbank, Capital One CEO and chairman
Source: BBC
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