Following the discovery of the Capital One hack on July 19th, in which Capital One Bank’s accounts on the Amazon Web Services cloud were hacked by an AWS engineer who took advantage of a misconfigured firewall and stole data, approximately 100 million people in the United States and 6 million people in Canada are affected.
As such, if you have or applied for a Capital One credit card between 2005 and 2019, there’s a chance your data was intercepted.
Stolen data can include:
- Credit scores, credit limits, balances, payment history, self-reported income, contact information (Names, addresses, phone numbers, zip codes, dates of birth)
- 140,000 Social Security Numbers, and 1 million Canadian Social Insurance Numbers
- 80,000 linked bank account numbers
- “Fragments” of transaction data for 23 days during 2016, 2017, and 2018
Capital One has stated that it will email affected customers, as well as provide free credit monitoring and identity protection to affected customers.
In the meantime, along with switching banks, users can freeze their credit through the following credit bureaus:
- Equifax
- Experian
- TransUnion
- ChexSystems
Users can also lock their credit card via the Capital One app and through their website. Customers can also snag a free annual copy of their credit report once a year via www.annualcreditreport.com, which is authorized by the United States government.
While Capital One has stated that credit card account numbers and account credentials weren’t leaked, customers should change their passwords and keep an eye on their transactions. If something suspicious or fraudulent has been spotted, they can be reported to a Capital One representative via the bank’s customer service of through the Capital One app.
Finally, given that phone numbers and email addresses associated with customers’ credit cards are now available, be alert for both email and phone-based scams. Spam text messages can be reported for free by copying the message and forwarding it to the number 7726 (SPAM).
For spam calls, you can use an app to block robocalls or configure the Do Not Disturb settings in iOS Settings. This will block calls from numbers that don’t appear in your contacts.
For email scams, don’t click on any suspicious links. Most websites won’t ask for your account credentials, as has historically been the case.
In short, change your Capital One password, watch for scams and spam, and be careful out there.
Via The Mac Observer
