MORE than 3,000 people have received statements from the Skipton Building Society including other people's details.

A "printing error" has revealed the society's customers' names, account numbers and balances on the back of other people's statements.

Customers whose details have been exposed are receiving letters offering a change in their account number.

The Skipton, which has apologised for what it described as a "third party error", said not enough detail was revealed to put accounts at risk.

The error affected passbook accounts which are not accessible online.

These accounts also require a signature for withdrawals so any fraudster would need to build up more details in order to access an account.

This is the latest in a series of incidents by a variety of institutions that have exposed people's personal details.

In the Skipton case, 3,115 customers received the statements with other customers' names, account numbers and balances on the reverse. The building society said this was a small proportion (just under 3%) of the mailing list of 108,000.

"This did not include the other customers' address, date of birth or other identifying details. The risk to affected customers is negligible because of this," a spokeswoman for the Skipton said.

"Nevertheless, we have written to those affected to apologise and to reassure them that the correspondence contained insufficient information to enable any unauthorised transactions on their accounts.

"We are also offering to change the account numbers of any customers seeking additional peace of mind."

She added that the regulator - the Financial Services Authority - had been told of the incident.