What Happened?
With the constant advancement of technology, data breach is on the rise. One of the largest-ever thefts of data from a bank occurred on Monday, July 29th. About 140,000 Social Security numbers, 80,000 bank account numbers, and one million “social insurance numbers,” or Canadian social security numbers, were stolen as a result of hacking.
The American consumers whose information was compromised were notified by mail, and the Canadians that were affected were directly notified. Capital One also decided to make free credit monitoring and identity protection available to anyone impacted by the breach.
Paige Thompson, a 33-year-old software engineer, was taken into custody by the FBI. She has been accused of stealing the data by breaching a web application firewall.
This could have been prevented. Equifax, a consumer credit reporting agency, had settled for more than $575 million, just last week, over a recent data breach it had about two years ago. Equifax hid this from the public for several months. This underscores the importance of transparency in PR and how it could make or break the company’s reputation.
Knowing this information, how should we, as consumers, ever be expected to hand over our personal information with ease in the future?
Capital One has addressed this crisis and came up with guidelines that will encourage consumers to keep track of their credit card accounts and manage any suspicious activity. If any of this suspicious activity arises, consumers can forward that information along to abuse@capitalone.com
This should be a major wake up call to all of us. It is easy to go on with your day, trusting that these companies are keeping your personal information safe, but that is clearly not always the case.
