Banking customers ignoring identity fraud advice, analyst claims

Thu, 01 Feb 2007

Thousands of banking customers are failing to heed advice from the financial services industry about how to protect their identity, it has been claimed.

This week, a new study from the Information Commissioner's Office has found that a quarter of British banking customers in the UK do not regularly check their financing statements to check for dubious payments.

Meanwhile, the report also suggests that a third of people admit to discarding unshredded banking statements and receipts, while 80 per cent of people have never checked over their credit reference file.

Commenting on the findings, Melanie Mitchley, director of industry relations at credit reference agency Callcredit, explained the importance of following basic banking guidelines.

"Just remembering to destroy personal documents such as bills and statements before throwing them away would go a long way to starving ID fraudsters of opportunities," she said.

"People are underestimating the heartache."

Last month, fellow banking institution Sainsbury's Bank warned about the possibility of identity theft from personal computers.

The financial services provider estimated that a third of all computers thrown away after Christmas were not wiped of information before being discarded, raising the possibility that many fraudsters could gain access to confidential financing information.

add to favouritesnewsletterlink to this pagesend to friendpost comments

Link to this page

Copy and Paste the following HTML into your page.