Greg's Corner

100 million card holders hit by data breach

If you have a credit card through Capital One, you’re probably waking up to the news that your data might have been exposed on the internet. According to reports, 33-year-old Paige Thompson worked for Capital One’s cloud hosting service and was able to gain access to the information through a vulnerability in Capital One’s firewall. Thompson is believed to have not only bragged about having the Capital One information on social media but also posted the information on an online repository that’s normally used to host open source projects. She is said to have done all this while continuing to use her real name.

The breach is said to have affected more than 100 million Capital One customers. 140,000 Social Security numbers were said to have been exposed along with countless names, addresses, credit scores, and bank account numbers. Capital One states that the vulnerability has since been patched and that they will be offering free credit monitoring for anyone affected by the breach. If you are a Capital One customer that has been affected you should be receiving notification shortly telling you that your account had been breached. This breach could end up costing Capital one somewhere in the range of $100-$150 million.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VLNb4yh1k8%5D

However, not all is lost if your account has been exposed. In order to better protect yourself, it is recommended that you go over your credit card statements to make sure there hasn’t been any unauthorized activity. You can also freeze your credit temporarily so no one can take out any loans or other financial transactions in your name. You should also change all the passwords to your financial accounts and make sure not to use the same password. what you shouldn’t do is ignore this issue as it has the potential to damage not only your credit but your personal finances as well. Don’t let someone else’s actions negatively impact your financial well being.