Over 90 per cent of businesses in the UK have been described as putting details of their customers at risk of identity fraud, it has emerged.

The statistics were revealed in a report published to coincide with the beginning of National Identity Fraud Prevention week, a government-backed initiative to highlight the potential problems of identity theft in the UK.

It was noted that 72 per cent of those interviewed thought that dishonest colleagues could give away information and more than half believed that sensitive documents could potentially be stolen from the desks of workers.

Furthermore, 14 per cent are known to look at pages on the internet without protection and a further third of respondents did not let co-workers or management know if any confidential items had gone missing.

According to the Home Office, "identity theft can result in fraud affecting your personal financial circumstances, as well as costing government and financial services millions of pounds a year".

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)