The personal details of millions of Vodafone customers, including their names, home addresses, driver's licence numbers and credit card details, have been publicly available on the internet in what is being described as an ''unbelievable'' lapse in security by the mobile phone giant.

This website is aware of criminal groups paying for the private information of some Vodafone customers to stand over them.

Other people have apparently obtained logins to check their spouses' communications.

Personal details, accessible from any computer because they are kept on an internet site rather than on Vodafone's internal system, include which numbers a person has dialled or texted, plus from where and when.

The full extent of the privacy breach is unknown but this website has learnt that possibly thousands of people have logins that can be passed around and used by anyone to gain full access to the accounts of about 4 million Vodafone customers.