People are "not being sensible" about the information they put on social networking websites - meaning that companies IT security measures could be bypassed, one expert has warned.

Tony Neate, managing director of Get Safe Online, said that as the online market grew more and more criminals would look to exploit the opportunities it presents.

He explained: "we're going to get criminals from opportunists all the way up to serious and organised criminals going online. So as more and more people do it, we're going to potentially see the percentage increase in criminal activity."

Mr Neate added that there was a worrying tendency for people to put information such as there address, telephone number on date of birth on social networking sites.

He warned that as this information was often used to confirm a person's identity fraudster could contact a company pretending to be an individual and render that firm's security measures useless.

According to Experian one in four UK consumers has been a victim of ID fraud.

A recent Connect survey found that the two major concerns about outsourcing services like IT support were 'loss of control' (56 per cent) and 'budget over-runs' (43 per cent).