The crooks can either use people’s names and addresses to set up bank accounts or acquire credit card accounts, or simply transfer money out of unsuspecting customers’ accounts.

Criminals either get jobs in call centres themselves, or bully employees into handing over sensitive information.

Gavin Halliday, chairman of Talking Tayside, the public-private sector organisation created in 2000 to promote the call centre industry in Tayside, said that identity theft was not a problem that had been experienced in Dundee call centres.

“I’ve got to say I’ve never heard of any local companies affected in that way,” he said.

“Companies are very open about discussing issues affecting them and Talking Tayside is a good sort of talking shop but this has never come up.

“We also work on a one-to-one basis and I’m sure I would have heard if this was a problem,” added Mr Halliday.

He added that data protection was top of the agenda for all call centre companies. The Customer Contact Association, the trade association representing call centres across the UK, has said the problem was a “concern” but not widespread.

Nearly 800,000 people work in the UK’s call centre industry and it is believed that companies who out-source their call centre work to other companies are most vulnerable to criminals.

There are around 7000 employees in Tayside with nearly 5000 of those based in Dundee.

Major employers in the city include Norwich Union, BT, HBOS, Tesco and the Inland Revenue.

A spokesman for HBOS said the bank was confident no employee would be able to steal a customer’s details.

“We do monitor their work and audit trails would show anything unusual.”

He added that the bank would not hesitate to pursue any employee guilty of such a crime through the courts.

A spokeswoman for Tayside Police said, “We are not aware of any reported incidents of this kind in the Tayside area.”