Customers are being told that fraudsters couldn't have used scraps of personal banking information found binned by banks to commit identity theft.

This was the official response from APACS, the UK payments association, and the British Bankers' Association (BBA) after the Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) named 12 financial institutions found to be in breach of the Data Protection Act.

Jemma Smith spokeswoman for APACS said: “In essence any information about anyone of us can be dangerous if it gets into the wrong hands, but a fraudster would need much more than the documents found in a bin to do damage.”

“Cut up credit cards on their own, for example, will not enable a fraudster to get money from customer’s accounts."

Alliance & Leicester, Barclays, Clydesdale Bank, The Co-operative Bank, HBOS, HFC Bank, Nationwide Building Society, Natwest, the Post Office, Royal Bank of Scotland, Scarborough Building Society and United National Bank were found by the ICO to have dumped customers' personal information in rubbish bins.

This included cut up credit/debit cards, PIN numbers to customer’s accounts and insurance application forms. One bank was also found to have disposed of a financial report containing customer’s names, addresses, dates of birth and account numbers.

The British Bankers’ Association (BBA) also said despite the amount of data the banks left for the dustmen, it would not be enough to leave consumers at risk of having their identity stolen.

“The nature of the information involved on its own wouldn’t compromise a person’s security. There are a lot more factors that would need to be in volved,” Brian Capon spokesman for the BBA told Computeractive.

Both organisations were at pains to try to reassure the public that the banks in question had recognised the need to make sure they disposed of this data in accordance with the Data Protection laws.

“All the banks in question have agreed to the undertakings commissioned by the ICO and are working with the organisation to fix these weaknesses,” said Capon.

However, deputy information commissioner David Smith was less forgiving. He said: “It is unacceptable for banks and other organisations to carelessly discard their customer’s information.

“It is vital they take security seriously, if they do not, they not only risk further action from the information commissioner but also risk losing the trust of their customers.”

All the organisations have been made to sign an undertaking by the ICO and will face a detailed inspection of their security procedures.

In the meantime bank customers worried about their finances have been advised by the BBA to keep a constant check on transactions and alert their bank if they see any discrepancies.