Could buying a cheap pizza take away your life savings?

A serious security breach has left potentially thousands of people at risk of identity theft and credit card fraud.

For Brendan Lovett it started when he simply got sick of the rubbish being left to blow round the car park of his Asian takeaway by the Eagle Boys pizza store nearby.

• Identity theft alert
• Mail thieves
• Not so safe as houses

It was as he cleaned up that he noticed there was a lot more being discarded than rubbish.

“I've come across names and addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses and also credit card details,” Lovett said.

Santana is a former employee of the shop, and says it's common practice to dispose of the receipts - which contain customers’ names, addresses, phone numbers, credit card numbers, expiry dates, and the security number on the back - by binning them.

Today Tonights latest safety and security stories

It’s a practice that makes the credit card owners as vulnerable as if they'd left the card itself lying around.

According to Detective Superintendent Brian Hay, who heads up Queensland's Fraud Squad, “this is very disturbing on a number of fronts. The credit card details are all there, with the CSV number. But you also have the person's identity, telephone contacts and their address. This is very serious.”

Hay believes it is one of the most alarming privacy breaches he's seen.

More stories from reporter Adam Marshall

“If you have the credit card, the name on the card, and you've got that additional security code, you've just rendered that security code redundant,” he explained.

Hay is now calling on Eagle Boys to conduct an immediate security audit, and for customers to consider cancelling their cards.

“As a matter of urgency they need to put the safety and the security of their clients first, not the convenience of their operations,” he said.

Kochie's Business Builders: Protecting customers' credit card information

Lovett has taken it upon himself to contact every customer who's receipts he's found.

Phil Foxwell runs document storage and destruction company Grace. He says it's not hard to protect customers’ privacy, but many companies fail to follow simple procedures.

“Quite often stuff goes into wastepaper bins, cleaners come round and they empty it in the skip bin out the back, so it's not secure,” Foxwell said.

VEDA the largest credit file storage company in the country, now offers a service that gives credit card holders extra peace of mind and costs just over $50 a year.

“The Veda Alert Monitoring Service shows customers when someone has applied for credit in their name,” VEDA’s Andrea Peters said.

“Then consumers are empowered to try and stop the fraudster before they start using credit in their name.”

Eagle Boys says they have taken the incident, which occurred at two stores with one franchisee, extremely seriously.

In this case procedures weren't followed by a particular franchisee, and as a result Eagle Boys has made contact with the entire franchisee community, and have reviewed their processing system to ensure there are no further breaches.