Caroline Walker, who became the victim of credit card fraud when criminals applied for four credit cards using her details, is offering her advice to others in an attempt to help others avoid becoming victims as well.

She says she became suspicious that her details were being used when she received an application for the redirection of her post, which she had not requested. The letter stated that she had one day before all her post would be redirected to an alternate address.

Luckily for Caroline, she was on friendly terms with her postman and was around to check the post before any redirection took effect. “Our postman does know me and he questioned it. He gave us a phone number to cancel the application immediately,” she said.

After this first incident to arouse her suspicions, Caroline then received successful applications for a Barclaycard, two American Express cards and a Capital One card.

She said: "He tried to make a redirection before he asked for the cards. Obviously we have stopped them all.”

She pointed out that they were lucky, saying: "Had we been on holiday, the letter from the Post Office only gave one day's notice and had our postman not been as alert as he was he could have got away with all those cards.”

"Had he been successful it would have been absolutely devastating. No one would have known until a month later when we had a bill."

"We are not the only people this is happening to. We have been able to stop this but what if he's successful with them? I'm issuing a warning to other people. I just want to alert them."