OFF-SHORE CALL CENTERS ENDANGER CONSUMERS IDENTITY IN BRITIAN

London’s Channel 4 presents a documentary airing on Thursday which will put the problem of British consumer data theft from Indian call centers under the spotlight.

A British documentary scheduled to air tomorrow night in London claims that thousands of credit card and passport details are being stolen from British consumers and sold on for as little as £5 each. The culprit – foreign call centers.

Channel 4 will broadcast 'Dispatches' an undercover documentary entitled ‘The Data Theft Scandal' on Thursday at 9pm.

The program follows a 12-month investigation and exposes "alarming security failures in a number of commercial call off shore centers".

Hidden camera footage shows one middleman offering the undercover reporter a database containing the credit card details of 200,000 people and another middleman offering details of customers with Halifax, Nationwide, Woolwich, Bank of Scotland and NatWest for £5 each.

The UK government estimates that identity fraud costs the UK economy £1.7bn and that there are more than 100,000 victims every year.