As far as the U.S. Social Security Administration knows, her name is Aurianna Dague, and she's about to turn 11. But when Aurianna's mom went to replace her daughter's lost birth certificate last year, Colorado's division of vital statistics found no record of her child.

So began a bizarre case of bureaucratic identity theft. Dague said the only birth certificate now available to Aurianna bears the last name of Ian Michael, a father she has rarely seen and never lived with. Because Aurianna is a juvenile, agencies working her case did not return calls or said they cannot talk to me. Her mom, who can and should be talked to, says she's gotten a year-long runaround.

Publicity around the methods used to investigate the source of boardroom leaks to the media has centred on “pretexting”, where investigators have obtained phone company records on individuals by posing as legitimate customers.

But it has emerged that HP also used a “tracer” device or web bug. HP ethics chief Kevin Hunsaker confirmed in a memo to senior company executives that a "covert intelligence gathering operation" used a Microsoft Hotmail e-mail account to send a "legally permissible software-based tracing device” in an e-mail attachment” sent to a journalist, the San Jose Mercury News reported.

In a 12-month undercover investigation, Turton infiltrates criminal networks which trade British consumers' bank and other confidential information for huge profits in India, the world's new call centre capital.

Uncovering the methods used to thieve confidential data ranging from credit card numbers to passport details, Turton exposes the alarming security failures in a number of commercial call centres which allow detailed financial data on individuals to be gathered and sold on with ease. She discovers shocking data protection breaches and a new phenomenon known as 'data farming' – the unauthorised 'harvesting' of personal data to be sold on or exchanged for profit.