How to find out if your data was stolen in the Capital One hack, and what you can do about it

After announcing the data breach on Monday, Capital One said it would, "notify affected individuals through a variety of channels."

Moreover, the company is offering, "free credit monitoring and identity protection available to everyone affected."

It is unclear if any of the 100 million-plus affected individuals have been notified — as of publishing, none of the Capital One customers in our newsroom had received any correspondence. Representatives for the company didn't respond to repeated requests for comment.

The company has yet to send a general notification to customers about the hack — the only way to learn about it was through social media and news reports.

I have multiple Capital one cards, but found out via Twitter, yall couldn't be bothered to send an email, a letter, a text, nothing! pic.twitter.com/weWIojQNjh

In the worst-case scenario in a data breach like this, your Social Security number and personal information could be used for identity theft. In a slightly less awful possibility, your credit card could be used to buy things against your will. And in an even less awful possibility, you may see an increase in attempted "phishing" attacks via email and/or phone — more spam emails, and more robocalls, essentially.

There is, at the very least, one solid option for protecting against the worst scenario: A credit freeze.

Check out our full instructions right here for freezing credit with the various credit score agencies.

At the bare minimum, there's one very easy security protection you can enact: Pay attention to your credit card bill and your bank statements!

If you see something show up that looks out of place, call your credit card company/banking institution.

Notably, Capital One says that "no credit card account numbers or log-in credentials were compromised" in the breach, "and over 99 percent of Social Security numbers were not compromised." Which is to say that it's unlikely you'll suddenly encounter fraudulent transactions on your credit card or in your bank account — but it sure doesn't hurt to pay slightly closer attention.

Between the massive Equifax data breach of 2017 and the massive Capital One data breach this week, it's been a bad few years for keeping personal data secure.

If it's freaking you out, that's totally understandable. Perhaps it's time to consider enrolling in an identity theft protection service.

Both Equifax and Capital One are offering free identity theft protection to the hundreds of millions of people affected in their respective breaches, but you may want to shop around and decide which of the many different identity theft prevention services is right for you.