Fraudster Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) assumes the identity of a pilot

In Steven Spielberg's latest film, real-life fraudster Frank Abagnale managed to assume several bogus identities with little more than a dandy uniform and a winning smile.

Catch Me If You Can is set in the 1960s, long before the advent of swipe cards, eye scanners and international police databases.

Therefore, with so much electronic data on all of us floating around now, it should be much more difficult these days to steal another person's identity.

In fact, identity fraud is the world's fastest growing crime and it is the existence of so many different stores of information which make pretending to be someone else so easy.

Blunkett's driving licence

By taking a piece of information from here, another from there, criminals can cross-match personal details, enough to pretend to be someone else.

BBC investigative reporter Paul Kenyon showed how easy it is when he assumed the identity of UK Home Secretary David Blunkett.

In today's Britain you can become anyone you want to be Paul Kenyon Kenyon Confronts: ID fraudsters

A trip to the family records office secured a copy of the politician's birth certificate.

That was sufficient proof to get a provisional driving licence in Mr Blunkett's name - despite the politician being registered blind.

From a birth certificate, it is easy then to obtain a National Insurance number, a bank statement and a utility bill, which are universally used as proof of identity.

"In today's Britain you can become anyone you want to be, it's very, very easy," Kenyon concluded.

There are several methods criminals use to obtain these details.

They may call someone up pretending to be the bank, asking them to confirm their password and account details.

Or increasingly, they simply raid bins looking for old bank statements, credit applications and utility bills.

'Easy crime'

Experian, the UK's largest credit reference agency, went through 400 household bins in Nottingham to show how easy it was.

One in five contained enough information to commit transaction fraud, a crime which is rising by almost 100% every year.

"A clever identity fraudster can use a utility bill to change your address and redirect your mail," said spokesman Bruno Rost.

"It's far too easy to fake a passport or credit card. All the databases have been severely compromised and the whole system is riddled with holes."

The company is campaigning for a new identification system which would ensure the integrity of data but in the meantime, recommends shredding any documents before binning them.

Identity fraud costs companies and individuals in the UK �1.4bn a year, �360m of which is credit card fraud.

As well as theft, stolen identities are used by illegal immigrants to stay and work in the UK and extensively in benefit fraud.

People make it easy for criminals by throwing away account details

The 11 September hijackers were in the US on stolen identities.

In the UK, identity fraud in itself is not a crime, although profiting from it is.

"We haven't got the legislation, but we know it is going on," said Edward Venning of the National Criminal Intelligence Service.

There is legislation in the pipeline to make identity fraud a criminal offence and to bring in a new identity card to protect individuals.

But Mr Venning said the threat from this type of million-pound fraud in the future would be to big institutions like, banks and the Benefits Agency.

"Organised criminals will not be targeting individuals - we're not worth it," he said.