Capital One announced it experienced a data breach affecting more than 100 million credit card applicants. Photo courtesy Tdorante10/Wikimedia Commons

By Daniel Uria
July 29 (UPI) — Capital One announced Monday that a data breach exposed more than 100 million credit card applications as well as thousands of Social Security and bank account numbers. The Virginia-based bank announced that on July 19 it determined a hacker gained unauthorized access to its systems and obtained personal information of 100 million credit card applicants and customers in the United States and 6 million in Canada. In addition to the credit card application data, the individual also obtained credit scores, credit limit balances, payment history, contact information, fragments of transaction data from 23 days between 2016-18, about 140,000 Social Security numbers and 80,000 bank account numbers. Capital One said about 1 million Canadian Social Insurance numbers also were compromised.

No credit card account numbers or log-in credentials were compromised, Capital One said. The bank said it immediately fixed the vulnerability that led to the breach and will notify affected individuals in addition to provide them free credit monitoring and identity protection. The FBI arrested a Seattle woman, Paige A. Thompson, on charges of computer fraud and abuse in relation to the breach, court documents released Monday indicate.
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Oh goody, it seems like just yesterday the news about potential settlements in the big Equifax data breach of 2017, and now this?!? Obviously, as someone who has had three credit cards hacked in past two years, this is a serious issue for me. And, yes, I have two Capital One credit cards, so I’m worried now that I’m caught up in this hack as well. Just one more thing to worry about it. Oh joy.

But this time they’ve caught someone? Presuming that they can prove that this woman, Paige A. Thompson, is guilty, I have only one punishment in mind for her:

Yeah, I know I’ve said before that I oppose the death penalty on moral grounds, but I’m willing to make an exception in this one instance!

Seriously, we have to do something to prevent (and deter) this sort of crime, it’s just happening to much. And I only see it getting worse, we already have so much of our information that stories on computers that this type of hacking puts all of us at risk in multiple areas of our lives. In addition to credit card fraud and identity theft such as in instances like this, there have been cities like Atlanta, Baltimore, and Lake City, Florida that have had their government’s computer systems hacked and held for ransom to regain access, disrupting the city’s ability to function in the meantime.

As noted before, there are steps we should all take to protect our online date, but there’s only so much we can do as individuals. It’s up to this big companies whom we entrust our data to to make sure that they are secure.