The Capital One hack is of the largest data breaches ever — and among those affected are some of the bank’s most financially vulnerable customers.
The bank and the US Department of Justice revealed Monday that a hacker was able to access private data for more than 100 million Capital One customers. Social Security numbers, credit card applications, home addresses, credit scores, credit limits and balances were exposed.
The trove of data also included 80,000 bank account numbers, all of them for secured credit card customers.
Such credit cards are typically held by consumers with low credit scores or no credit history at all. That means many of those 80,000 customers could have a hard time recovering from an identity theft if their exposed data is used for ill.