A massive breach exposed the data of over 100 million Capital One customers, and the only way to find out if you've been affected is to check your mail
- Capital One said on Monday that information from over 100 million people, including Social Security and bank-account numbers, had been compromised.
- Capital One said that while it is still investigating, "it is unlikely that the information was used for fraud or disseminated by" the hacker.
- If you're a Capital One customer, there's currently no way to check if you've been impacted by the data breach.
- The company said on Thursday that it will alert customers if they're affected through the mail, and those notifications are expected to begin in the coming week.
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Capital One revealed a major data breach on Monday.
It said the breach included the personal information of over 100 million people, ranging from Social Security numbers to bank-account numbers and names.
If you applied for a Capital One credit card from 2005 through early 2019, there's a good chance you're affected.
So, how do you find out if you were impacted? In short, you can't. Currently, there is no way to find out.
In Capital One's announcement of the breach, the company said it would "notify affected individuals through a variety of channels."
But on Thursday, a company representative told Business Insider that at least some affected parties would be alerted through the US mail service. After Business Insider reached out for comment, Capital One updated its FAQ site for consumers with more information to that effect.
"We will directly notify by mail the US individuals whose Social Security numbers or linked bank account numbers were accessed," the updated FAQ section on Capital One's website says. "We will directly notify all Canadian customers affected."
The representative also said that affected parties can expect a notification in the mail starting next week.
Of note, of the 106 million-plus affected Capital One customers, only a small fraction of Social Security and bank account numbers are said to have been lost.
"About 140,000 Social Security numbers" from credit-card customers were taken, as well as "about 80,000 linked bank account numbers" from secured credit-card customers and "approximately 1 million Social Insurance Numbers" from Canadian credit-card customers," the company said on Monday.
The vast majority of the data lost in the breach, Capital One says, was customers' personal information: "Names, addresses, zip codes/postal codes, phone numbers, email addresses, dates of birth, and self-reported income," Capital One said.
As of Thursday, Capital One doesn't have a way for customers to check if that particular information was impacted, and representatives for the company didn't respond to a request for comment.