Capital One Data Breach Affects Over 100 Million Users

A massive data leak from Capital One could have affected over 100 million Capital One customers. Sources say a hacker stole sensitive information such as credit card applications which contained valuable information such as someone's social security number among other things.



Virgina-based bank, Capital One, said to have found out about the hack on July 19th and immediately reported the incident to the authorities. So far the perpetrator has been caught by the FBI in Seattle, Washington, while Capital One does not believe that any fraud has yet been committed. The person that was caught by the FBI was a woman by the name of Paige Thompson, a former Amazon cloud service employee. Users affected could have gotten their real names, phone numbers, home address, date of birth's, and income disclosed by the leak. Capital One officially disclosed that 140,000 Social Security numbers could have been accessed.

Paige Thompson faces a maximum of 5 years in prison and a fine of $250,000.

Capital One has offered free credit monitoring and identity protection to all users who were affected by the massive data breach. The breach has reportedly affected 100 million or more United States users and an extra 6 Million Canadian users.