Capital One on Monday, stated that the company has been hit by a massive data breach. This data breach has compromised the security and information of more than a hundred million customers. The data leak includes the security code number and account number of the customers.
The incident has led to the arrest of a woman named Paige A. Thompson. She is 33 years old and is a former software engineer. She is accused of stealing information from the credit card of the capital One customer. It is rated as one of the top 10 data thefts in the history of the United States, according to a report.
FBI has arrested Thompson on Monday for the theft. She has been accused of stealing the data from the capital One cloud servers between 12th March and 17th July. The data collected illegally consists of the social security number and the account number of millions of Capital One customers. It is one of the biggest data breaches and all the agencies are strictly investigating into the matter.
Capital One Data Breach
According to the department of justice, Thompson had made her initial appearance in the court and has been detained until August 1st. Computer fraud and data theft is a punishable offense. The offender can be sent to jail for 5 years or fined $250000.
The Bank said that the information stolen involved the personal information of the customers who had applied for a credit card between 2005 and 2019. It includes basic information like name, address, email address, and others.
Equifax is going to pay the amount to all the victims who have suffered this data theft. More than 1,40,000 social security codes and 80,000 bank account numbers were leaked in this data breach.
In the press release, capital One admitted that around a hundred million United States customers and 6 million Canadian customers have been affected by this mass of data breach. The problem in the system was found on July 19th and the companies that fixed it immediately. The so had publicly apologized for the inconvenience and has ensured that further investigation in association with the federal agencies is in process.
He also said that he was happy to know that the offender has been caught. Equifax had reached a deal with the federal trade commission to settle the 2017 case by paying the amount. The deal calls Equifax to pay at least $575 million, including $300 free credit monitoring services. It also includes different fines, which has to be paid to 50 states.
Free credit monitoring and personal identity will be available for everyone who has been affected by this massive data breach. Capital one has also launched a dedicated website to support and release information about this data breach. This is done to reduce the number of speculations in the market.
